


Come What May

by xwoman



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: 1960s, Ableism, Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Baby Mutants, Blind Character, Blindness, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Charles Being Concerned, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Charles in a Wheelchair, Charles is a dad, Dark!Charles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Erik Has Feelings, Erik has Issues, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Gay and Mutant in the 1960s, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Major Character Injury, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Multi, Mutant Rights, Mutants, Paralysis, Permanent Injury, Physical Disability, Post Beach Divorce, Post X-Men: First Class, Post-Cuba, Precognition, Psychic Abilities, Taking Care of Kids, Telepathy, X-Men: First Class (2011), Young Charles and Erik, but only kind of, impromptu school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2020-01-22 19:42:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18534208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xwoman/pseuds/xwoman
Summary: Hank pressed his forehead slowly against Charles’, but hesitated a while before going on, “Do you remember Erik?”Charles inhaled, placing a tentative hand against the back of Hank’s skull, gently rubbing at the two topmost cervical vertebrae, “Who?”“That man, who just left the room? Do you remember him?”“I…he’s like a…like déjà vu almost…like a memory that might have been a dream. Like a dream…like a dream you can’t remember after you’ve woken up. I know I’ve had a dream, but the more time passes the less I remember it.”





	1. Things Have Changed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik sees Charles again, only Charles is different. Erik finds out he's to blame for Charles' condition, and Charles nearly kills some people.

 The first time Erik saw Charles after the Cuban Missile Crisis it was on recruitment trip into the heart of Northern Maine. It was the summer of 1963 and the trees were greener than anything Erik had ever seen. Their branches cascading onto the grey pavement as he wound his way further North. A river on one side of the vehicle and a thick, overgrown forest on the other. It reminded him of Poland.

An hour further and he parked his truck in the dusty parking lot of a small gas station. Pulling the stick shift into park with a lean forearm. A thick cloud of black flies was bumbling around the hot engine. With one foot outside the door, he heard people yelling at each other and saw the was dust being aggravated just inside the store. He decided to close the car door and watch the chaos ensue, then he’d make his move.

The bloody smell of metal entered his nostrils. He took a sharp breath of it. It didn’t mean much to him, metal was part of almost everything, every structure. In blood iron and in iron which came from the earth. He rested his hands, wrist over wrist, on the steering wheel and cracked all the knuckles on his right hand.

 Then, suddenly, a body staggered through the door, wood splintering and glass shattering in every direction. The man, whoever he was, cried out at Erik to help him before tripping head first into the bumper of Erik’s truck and knocking himself unconscious. 

To Erik’s continued surprise Hank came jumping through the open door next, chasing another man. Claws extended; hair matted by heat and... was that blood?

This second man, trying to make a quick escape, wasn’t quick enough. Hank pinned him face first in the dirt and then lifted him bodily by his shirt collar. The man spit wet dirt from his mouth as Hank held the man just inches from his face, hot breath and teeth bared, Hank let out a long, steady growl. Then, the man pissed his pants.

A third man exited the door, forcing himself forward on unsteady feet.

“Oh no, you don’t you fucking prick!” An arm grasping the man’s shirt in the middle of his back and used the momentum to heave himself forward. Erik saw that person was using a wheelchair and watched as the fourth man was taken to the ground. The man in the wheelchair, inevitably a paraplegic by the way he hit the ground, had the man on his back, arm twisted viciously around his throat. Erik didn’t even have time to count to three before the man was knocked unconscious.

The man on the ground flipped the body off of his chest, turning the man onto his face in the dirt. Hank said something to the man on the ground, but it was garbled through the windshield. The overturned wheelchair was righted and Erik watched as its user hauled himself back into the chair’s seat. Grabbing each leg one at a time by the pant, dragging his own feet onto the footrests. He dusted off his pants and made himself comfortable.

The man in the wheelchair said something else, gesturing in from himself to Hank. Hank bent forward and said something to the other man quietly. The smaller man patted Hank’s enormous shoulder. Gestured again, this time to the men on the ground. Slowly, surreally, Erik watched Hank’s form wither, hair withdrawing, teeth growing human, eyes darkening, muscles growing smaller. The last time Erik had seen Hank he’d been transformed, and Erik had figured it had been permeant. Obviously not. Erik admitted he was impressed. Even in the wake of his decision to change himself, and failing horribly, Hank had found a way to regress and then erupt again at will. 

It was impressive and terrifying. It was like watching a movie.

Hank was still talking to the other man, seemingly very interested in the state of the man in the wheelchair. Concerned as looked him over, his inspection lingering on his legs. The smaller man seemed irritated.

The steel rods in the man’s back were lit up like lamplight to Erik. _So, he was paralyzed_ , Erik thought, and obviously a mutant. Those men would’ve struggled had it been up to them, but the smaller man had needed mere seconds to render them senseless. He must have been a…just then his mouth ran dry. He must have been a telepath. There was that familiar warmth at the base of his skull, in the chaotic scene he hasn’t noticed it.

And then, without the slightest bit of warning, the man in the wheelchair looked directly at him. They established fierce, unwavering eye contact. As if the man had known he had been there all along...as if...Erik glanced nervously to the helmet in the passenger seat, damning the fact that he’d taken it off due to the heat.

It was Charles.

It was fucking Charles.

Not only was it Charles, but Charles was in a wheelchair.

Not only was Charles in a wheelchair, but Charles was very clearly unable to use his legs.

That only meant one thing to Erik. It meant that Charles was paralyzed.

Not only was Charles paralyzed, but Erik knew the very likely accident that had caused it.

Suddenly, Erik knew he’d put Charles in that chair.

When he looked up again Charles was halfway to his truck, Hank tagging warily behind. Erik swore to himself and slowly opened the door, stepping free of the hot interior.

 “Erik,” Charles said, about to stay more when Hank chipped in.

“Fuck you, Erik.” Hank didn’t yell or turn blue, only dragged the unconscious men, one at a time, and by their feet, toward their van.

Erik’s mouth was so dry that he could taste his unfortunate heartbeat in his own mouth, “I didn’t know you took hostages, thought that was more my thing.”

Giving nothing away, Charles crossed his arms over his motionless legs, and leaned forward slightly, “A lot has changed.”

Erik looked him up and down, “Clearly.”

Charles narrowed his eyes tellingly, “You didn’t know.” A slight smirk on his face, “You’ve reached the correct conclusion I’m afraid.”

In the background of their tense reunion, Hank grunted and manhandled the unconscious men with some difficulty. Erik didn’t know why he didn’t just change back into that furry blue mess.

 “Only when he needs to,” Charles said.

“Afraid of his own mutation then,” Erik said quietly.

And Charles said, “It’s not uncommon to have a body which scares one to look at,” Erik and Charles again made eye contact. Charles had always been smaller, but now he seemed small in a different way. He was shorter, of course, being unable to stand, but that wasn’t it. Erik felt he was looking at a projection almost. He chalked it up to the shock of not only seeing Charles, unexpectedly, for the first time in a year but also the shock of seeing the very real consequences of his actions. Clearing the cloud of thoughts in his mind Charles said to him, “I’m managing Erik, truly,” and Erik looked down. This time directly at Charles’ broken body. Charles seemed to not like that very much.

In the background, Hank struggled with the third body, the one who’d hit his head on the bumper of Erik’s truck.

Erik looked down at Charles, his arms bulkier, to make up for the very obvious lack of muscle in Charles’ legs. Charles’ face had two cuts under his right eye and a bruise on his chin. The wheels of his chair had thick treads and no armrests. Charles was wearing boots. And it was only then that Erik realized how out of character for Charles this all was. Gone were his cardigans and dress shoes and in place an old t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Charles’ hands were dirty and calloused. His pants were ripped on his left leg. None this made any sense.

“I’ve never seen you fight,” Erik managed, unable to shake in confusion and sudden fear.

Charles’ let out a quiet sigh, “I think we should talk, Erik. Why don’t you follow Hank and I back? We’re based not far from here.”

Charles wrenched open the passenger side door to his van, praying for a graceful transfer in front of Erik. In the end, it was fine though, Charles maintaining a powerful demeanor even as he forced his legs inside the cabin with his own hands. In the back three men were thrown less than humanly, neatly piled on top of each other, but with the addition of zip ties on their wrists and ankles. Hank shuffled around the side of the car and into the driver’s side seat. Charles reached outside the passenger side door only to make awkward eye contact again as he disassembled his wheelchair to stash behind him. He refused to listen to Erik’s secret thoughts of pity. Charles was strong and powerful, and dangerous. His being paralyzed hardly factored into the equation at all. That was something he would have to take up with Erik later.

“Based?” Erik muttered, thinking Charles sounded more like him than he ever thought possible. Erik took one last look around the parking lot before agreeing and jumping into his own truck to follow.

Something was very strange indeed.


	2. Little Jeanie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Charles picks up some ice cream for the kids. Erik realizes that Charles and Hank *might* be a thing. And Jean decides that she doesn't like Erik very much, and paralyzes Erik for what he did to Charles, if only for a little while.

Charles and Hank turned right off a small intersection and into a parking lot of a small grocery store. Everything was small here, wherever here was. Erik’s truck followed just behind and parked next to them. Hank avoided eye contact with Erik. Not because he was scared of Erik but because Charles had just informed him that Erik hadn’t known that he’d ended up paralyzing Charles in Cuba. And that made Hank very angry. Stepping out of the driver's seat he stalked hotly into the cool air conditioning of the grocery store.

That left just Charles, still buckled in the passenger seat, and Erik, still sitting awkwardly in his truck.

 _Well come on then_ , Charles said and Erik turned his head to look over at Charles. It wasn’t easy, he had about one hundred feet, three windows, and a years-worth of guilt to look through just to make eye contact.

Charles was already fumbling to assemble his chair.

Erik came around the front of the van, stuffing his hands in his pockets, “So Hank doesn’t help you then?”

Charles looked up curtly, “He doesn’t need to,” he said, forcing open his wheelchair and pulling himself easily into it. The funny thing about his injury was the slight amount of retained feeling in his left foot and the very top of his left hip, not that he could move his foot, but just feeling it was strange. The rest of his left leg, and the entirety of his right one, including the lower part of his stomach, to just above the navel, was insensate and uncompromising. Some people, Charles had learned, even retain some movement after spinal cord injuries, but he hadn’t. That meant that when he transferred into his chair, he often forgot his right foot, something that drove Hank crazy.

Today was no different, as Charles moved his chair away from his car his right foot dragged along the pavement. Erik paled at this, watching sickly as Charles dragged that foot too, onto its footrest. But Charles took it in stride and pushed toward the store with an easiness which only comes with practice.

“What are we doing here?” Erik called after him.

“We promised the children ice cream, and should we return without some, I fear what we might find,” Charles laughed at that, propelling himself forward through the sliding doors.

The confusion for Erik only deepened at that, but still, Erik followed briskly behind Charles, watching him pump his wheelchair guiltily. Erik didn’t know anything about any children. Sean and Alex weren’t children, so Charles’ had a new ward. And by the sounds of it, more than just one.

By the time they reached the frozen food aisle, Hank was looking slightly stressed, “I know Jean wants chocolate, mainly because she wouldn’t shut up about and every so often, I hear in my head, only vaguely, but I…the other kids?”

“Strawberry for Orono,” Charles said, “And Scott likes pistachio,” Charles laughed a little at this, “Sean wants some I know because once we take over watching the children, he’ll be off…ugh…doing what he does…so let’s get him cookies and cream.” Charles had already begun piling the various flavors on his lap.

“Charles you shouldn’t put the ice cream on your legs like that,” behind them Erik pretended to be interested in something else, Hank went on, “you’ll get cold and…”

Charles, refusing to listen, simply closed the freezer door and pushed himself backward. Erik looked up from a label he was pretending to read. Hank seemed flustered, “I can’t feel them, Hank,” Charles said as he pushed past Erik.

Erik balked.

Hank went after Charles, throwing his hands in the air, “That’s precisely the reason!”

 _When did you know?_ Erik sent, knowing only Charles could hear it.

_When did I know what? When did I know that I couldn’t feel my legs? Or when did I know that the feeling wasn’t going to come back?_

Erik had a bad taste in his mouth but didn’t follow up with his question. He just hung back as Charles and Hank paid for the ice cream. They laughed with the nice cashier and Charles, much to Erik dismay, wrapped an arm around Hanks' waist and laid his head against his hip.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Driving there took another half an hour.

About fifteen minutes into the trip, the heat returned to the base of Erik’s skull.

_I knew I was paralyzed the second you pulled the bullet out of my back. It like was an electric shock and then everything was gone. I thought, maybe, if I was lucky, and the doctor was good enough, that I could recover some use of my legs._

_But that’s not what happened, is it?_

_No, clearly not._

It was silent for a while and then Erik sent, _So, you’ll need a wheelchair for the rest of your life?_

The curious thing about telepathy is that it could be felt, tasted, and even smelt but never heard. Erik learned to distrust smells he couldn’t place, or tastes which came and went with few explanations. The smell he welcomed was Charles’ lavender, which felt like porcelain and left a slight heat at the base of his skull.

_Hank’s got his little experiments, but not even he thinks that it’s very likely I’ll ever walk again, or have any feeling in my legs for that matter._

_What did the doctors say?_

The air between fell silent for the rest of the drive and before long the van and Erik’s truck pulled into a small driveway that wound deeper into a forest.

Suddenly Erik tasted cinnamon, it nearly burned his eyes, _Mr. Charles has memories about you._

 _That’s only Jean,_ Charles thought at him _, I’ll have a talk with her later._

Shaken he parked his truck and stepped out into the air. Watching the van disappear into the trees. Telepathy always made him uncomfortable and this Jean kid had entered his mind without so much as a feeling. And she _was_ a _kid_ , from what Erik had gathered, under Charles’ care. Which made her extensive telepathy terrifying. _Mr. Charles has memories about you_. The trees were tall here, taller than Erik had ever seen. But his vision swam suddenly as his blood rushed away from his brain. The underbrush was thick _,_ but looked thicker now, and darker. _Mr. Charles has memories about you._ Erik’s throat began to burn. _Mr. Charles has memories about you._ Erik began to sweat. _Mr. Charles has memories about you._ Erik’s vision swam. He remembered the helmet in the passenger seat and wanted to reach for it but knew he’d never get to it in time to stop whatever it was that was going on. _Mr. Charles has memories about you._ Erik felt a strange sensation wash over him, it certainly tasted like cinnamon but it took things with it as it left. Mainly it took with it the feeling in his legs _. Mr. Charles has memories about you._ Erik wanted to vomit. He gripped the bed his truck tightly as he began to lose feeling his legs. His heart rate accelerated. _Mr. Charles has memories about you._

Cinnamon. Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere.

Erik hit the ground, the earth rushing up to meet him. He found himself unable to support his body any longer. What should have been muddy dirt was sand instead. Where the ground should have been cool it was hot. So, so hot. Everything swam and crashed, he was completely overwhelmed. And he had no feeling in his legs and he couldn’t breathe. With what was left of his vision he struggled to see a helmet he couldn’t reach, as if the thought alone could keep Jean out of his head.

He had no feeling in his legs. He closed his eyes, certainly, someone would come for him. _Mr. Charles has memories about you._ His arms were weak. He was sweating and sticky. He couldn’t move his legs at all. Dirt was sand and the air was hot. _Charles has memories about you._ His lower back on fire he struggled to move at all. Fingers digging in the earth for some purchase, for anything. Someone would come for him. His mind ran away like ticker tape, images flashing brightly and not at all. There was Charles and he was Charles. The pain at the back of his head was hot and wet and Erik imagined a coin passing through his soft tissue and bone.

He was paralyzed. He was Charles. And a fear which did not belong to him settled in the pit of his stomach like a sandbag. He thought he might never walk again.

Color and darkness and a million little sounds and lights between them.

Erik absconded suddenly, meeting his unconscious gratefully.

~~~

Erik woke up sometime later in his own truck, moving slowly through the woods, “what the fuck…” He struggled to open his eyes. It felt like a hangover, and certainly worse than the worst hangover he’d ever had. He wanted to vomit.

“I told Jean she’d have to apologize on her own. She’s protective over Charles.”

Erik looked down at shakily at his legs, and seeing that he could now move them, managed to whisper only, “Hank…what…”

“Stay calm Erik, you’ve just had a seizure. Jean does that when she gets angry.”

“She’s very powerful.” He said, “How old is she?”

“She’s eight years old and has too much power to have such little control over herself.”

Erik had a moment of clarity, an unsettling thought forming in his mind, “Is that why you and Charles are out here?” Erik struggled, with what numbness was left in his legs, to pull himself upright.

Hank looked over at Erik, who looked pallid and uneasy, “That’s part of it, yeah…are you alright?”

“Fine,” Erik grumbled, grateful for the function of his lower body survived Jean’s psychic attack, but terribly guilty that Charles didn’t have the luxury himself. Charles only knew what it felt like to lose the ability to walk. He’d never know what it might feel like to heal from an injury like that, and it was Erik’s fault.


	3. What's Done is Done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hank talks to Erik, and Erik talks to Charles, and Charles teaches his kids to read, even if one of them is blind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re-edited this chapter a bit.

After they had been parked for some time, and Erik had taken a few minutes to pull it together, Hank turned to Erik. He had an angry yellow glaze to his eyes. Hank’s face every so slowly bulking, dangerous orbs set on a widening face.

“How did you not know?” His hands gripped the steering wheel with force, he was clearly upset, not only from the look on his face but the way the hair on his arms changed slowly from pale brown to blue.

“Know what?” Erik was still thinking through the fog that Jean had left behind, it was like wading through water.

“About Charles, about what had happened to him.”

“I…” there was a long pause, “I don’t know.”

“He was clearly in bad shape. You took the bullet out, which is, pardon my language, why he’s fucking paralyzed now. You destabilized the vertebra the bullet came into contact with and when you pulled it out of him, you tore all the nerves, including his spinal cord. The doctors may have been able to help if it was a crush injury alone but with those nerves severed, and his spinal cord pressed on the way it was...” Erik sat, heart, pounding inside his chest, muscles as tight a drum, unable to look at Hank. He looked at the ground instead. He looked at his feet which he could feel again, “And then you took the only easy and available mode of transport and fucked off.”

The metal of the truck began to shake not because Erik was angry but because he was upset and shaking himself. The metal of the truck only responding accordingly. But Hank didn’t let up, hands slowly turning blue, “I carried Charles out of Cuba, and he just kept saying, every time he could catch his breath, that he couldn’t feel his legs. And that coin…Charles didn’t even know the year or the month for weeks!” Hank growled hands tightening on the steering wheel, Erik thought he might break it.

_Hank, please, leave it be. What’s done is done._

Hank shut his eyes and took a deep breath, “Listen, Erik,” the truck subsided its shaking, and the blueness of Hank’s body calming, “I’m not happy that you’re here, but if Charles is right, this might be the best place for you right now. Charles is forgiving, I’m not so much,” another languid sigh, “His wheelchair is made of carbon fiber but those rods in his back are steel,” Hank released the steering wheel, “Let me explain something to you, if you fuck with those rods and destabilize his vertebrae again you could kill him, or worsen his paralysis. And as you’re about to see, a lot of people are depending on him."

Erik looked at Hank despondently, “He was the one throwing himself on the ground, Hank.”

Hank signed, gripping his temples with a hand, “I know, we’re working on that,” Hank exited the truck and slammed the door, but he wanted to get one last word in so he yelled, “I’ve gotten rid of that fucking helmet too!”  
~~  
Their ‘base’ was a small cabin nestled on all sides by tall pine trees. At the front of the house, there was a short ramp. Erik allowed himself to touch the wooden porch railing with a light hand. The air was clean here, the smell of cedar and pine shifted thickly in the air. Erik had a memory at the front of his head but forced it back. He didn’t want Charles seeing it. The only memories he had of Charles were preinjury, only ones in which Charles could still walk.

It was calm and quiet here but everything smelled of heat and cinnamon, the air almost felt hot. For the first time, Erik realized why Charles might have had to get so far away from the city. Jean was just too powerful. Erik was astounded as he laid a hand gently against the wooden walls, even they felt warm. But if this was why they were out here, then why the fight at the gas station? Something still wasn’t adding up.

He turned the door handle slowly and peered inside the house, he was more or less welcome here, but he felt like he was walking on eggshells. It was empty and dim inside, save for a low light coming from a room at the back of the cabin. As he grew nearer, he heard Charles’ speaking and as Erik looked inside, he both was and wasn’t surprised by what he saw. Three children sat quietly at their desks and Charles was reading out loud to them, an expert from a children’s book he’d never heard of.

At each desk sat a child Erik had never seen, though Jean was an easy guess. She was a small redheaded girl on the right side of the room. Hand fidgeting almost angrily. She looked distracted. Next to her sat a second girl, her skin dark up her hair was a more-white-than-grey color. She sat with her legs crossed, watching Charles as he read. The third student was a young boy, not much older than eight or nine. While the other two students looked down at their books now and then, this young man looked straight ahead, hands scanning slowly along the book on his desk. It had to braille then, Erik thought, the boy was blind.

Erik stood in the doorway for a while longer, arms crossed at his chest. Charles’ had always been meant for teaching; he was a natural at it.

  
_He was beautiful._ Erik thought quietly, _and perfect._

A memory formed and took Erik by storm, a secret memory, of waking up next to Charles and watching him sleep. It was just days before Cuba, before all the horrible things that happened on that beach. A sadness settled on his face as the memory changed again to Charles and Erik doing things they’d probably never do again, things they could never do again even if they wanted to. Erik only knew so much about injuries like the ones Charles had but-

A noise snapped him out of his fever dream. It was the voice of the young boy; the other two girls apparently are gone now.

“How’s the reading coming, Scotty?”

“Just fine, Mr. Hank.”

“I told you that you don’t need to call me that, Hank is fine.”

Charles chuckled quietly, one hand on Scott’s hand, helping to guide his fingers across the small raised dots. Erik watched quietly, awe welling up inside is throat. Watching Charles teach a blind student to read tore him apart. If Charles was a mentor for mutants, he must have been even more so for a mutant like Scott.

Scott said in a very small voice, “But I wish I could see,” Scott fumbled for Hank’s shirt, “Mr. Hank, can you fix me yet?”

Charles sighed at this, “Scott there is nothing to fix, but we can try and help you get better. But…I can’t make any promises,” Charles looked at Erik in the doorway, “Remember our talk, last year we both got hurt. We’ve both lost something important but that doesn’t mean something is wrong with us, it just means we have to do some things a little differently now.” Scott nodded, “Remember? You can’t see but we have things to help you with that, like braille and your stick, right? Just like I use my wheelchair,” Charles still had Scott’s hand in his, and now moved it to the wheel of his chair, “I got hurt and now I can’t walk, but this doesn’t mean either of us is bad people.”

Scott sniffled, and then got up from the table and settled into Charles’ lap, “I’m scared, Mr. Charles, that I won’t ever see anything again,” Scott was a mostly invisible weight on Charles’ lap.

“I understand, I remember what the doctors told me. But I’m not scared, I need to live the life I have the best way I can.”

It was a somber scene. Scott, apparently completely blind, glued to Charles in a moment of pain. Charles had Scott’s hair in his hand and was making small sounds to soothe him.  
Scott took a large breath, as large a breath as an eight-year-old boy could take, and said, “The doctor’s told you that you’re not gonna walk ever again, didn’t they Mr. Charles?”

Charles seemed to finally choke up a bit, a small laugh escaped his throat, Hank, who was still there, pressed a hand to Charles’ shoulder firmly, “Yeah Scott, that’s what they said.”

Erik got horribly hot all at once. He got light headed and turned to make a run for the front door, the guilt in his chest an animal clawing to get out. On the porch, he had his forearms on the railing. He was bent at the waist, staring at the ground, when he heard Charles’ wheelchair rattle over the threshold of the door.

“Erik.”

Without standing upright Erik said, “Charles, I really fucked up.”

Charles pushed himself only slightly closer. Now Erik could see just the footrests of the chair, Charles sock-clad feet looked a little crooked, “I don’t blame you.”

“I blame me,” Erik said quietly.

“It’s been over a year. I haven’t seen you,” Charles put a hand on Erik’s forearm, “Look at me, Erik.”

Erik sighed and stood up, eyes settling on Charles body, pushing forcefully at the memories which threatened to rush out of his head like water from a broken pipe.  
“Erik. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Erik thought back to writhing on the ground, mud in his mouth, unable to feel his legs, the pain in his head like a knife pushed through the base of his skull, he was thinking that was how Charles had felt that day on the beach. He thought about that heavy fear in his stomach, of never being able to walk again, he thought about how he’d put that fear in Charles. He was thinking about Charles with his arm around that man’s throat, how he had nearly killed him. He was thinking of how powerful Charles was, despite the wheelchair, despite the fear, despite all thoughts he must hear about his body every day, about how he was ‘broken’ now. Erik was thinking how Charles was the furthest from broken someone could possibly be. Erik was thinking about all the time they’d had sex and about Charles arm around Hank’s hip in the supermarket. He was thinking about how he wanted to touch Charles and about how he didn’t want to because he was afraid to hurt him again.

“Erik,” Charles said, a little pain in his eyes. Erik wondered if he had heard all that? “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know why you hurt those men earlier today. I’m confused. I missed you. I... I’ve just found out that you’re paraplegic,” Charles’ winced at the medical terminology, “and that’s it’s my fault. And that you’re aren’t getting better.” Erik closed his eyes, feeling Charles take his hands, “I’m thinking I kind of sound like you.”

Charles laughed a little at that., “You’re out here because we’re going to need you.”


	4. The Kids are Alright (now anyway)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they get *slightly* drunk.

After some time, Erik and Charles re-entered the little house. Erik sat, struggled with his shoes, eventually prying the boots from his feet. Charles and Hank were already clad in their socks. Erik felt that some tension had left the air.

That was until Jean marched out into the living room. Red hair down to her waist, not much taller Charles was these days. Charles extended a hand for her, “Was is it, Jean?”

Jean said nothing, only looked at Erik with a cold expression. She was an eerie, absolutely silent, calm but possessive force. No doubt this power lurked somewhere deep inside of her, ululating, writhing, dark. Trying to remove that force, as Erik had become absolutely sure that Jean was too much of a risk to live in Westchester, would be like uprooting an old and ancient tree.

Being this close to Jean was almost smothering.

Charles nodded, and despite Jean’s silence, he replied, “Yes, Jean. That’s true. I’d like to talk more about this is you’d be willing to use your voice.”

“That man hurt you,” was all she said.

Charles sighed, apparently his body would be the topic of conversation for years to come. But Jean was young and nearly everything seemed catastrophic to her. She had attached herself to him, like lichen to a rock. If he didn’t do something soon, she’d cover him in this force inside of her. This anger. She’d cover all of them and then stretch herself outward, an unstoppable force shutting out slowly all the other forces in the world until not even the sun was visible. Her gift was too strong to be anything other than a curse.

“It was an accident, Jean. Accidents happen. I think you owe Erik an apology,” Charles reached for her hand, which she took and closed her eyes, shaking her head.

“Jean, you could’ve hurt Erik. We’ve talked about how to use your powers and how not to. Which did you do today? Voice please,” Charles added at the end of his sentence.

“The bad kind.”

“That’s right, and we don’t hurt people on purpose do we, not unless we have absolutely no other alternatives.” Jean nodded in agreement. Charles thought of the men, no doubt sleeping under the influence of whatever drug Hank had given them. The men that he and Hank had taken from the store that afternoon, Charles thought of his arm around the man’s neck, and the nudge into unconsciousness Charles had given him. But he only thought of them behind the wall he’d set up in his mind, protecting his thoughts from Jean’s.

Charles wondered how long it would last.

Charles, realizing he wasn’t going to get an apology out of her, sent her off to bed. As she left the room, albeit slowly, she haunted at the back of Erik’s mind all the way. Erik felt all the hair on his body stand up. Jean was terrifying. Her small frame containing a colossal, comic, achingly powerful thing inside of her.

With Jean having disappeared behind her bedroom door Charles dropped his veneer. Suddenly he looked exhausted and small and hurt, “My back is fucking killing me,” he whispered, almost absently, somewhat detached. Charles attempted to shift or stretch, and when that didn’t work, he moved closer to the couch but didn’t immediately manhandle his body onto it.

Erik noticed his apprehension, “Do you want help?”

Charles looked aggravated for only a brief second. He realized he wasn’t moving anywhere without help, he was in too much damn pain, “I suppose,” was all he said.

Erik took a step closer only then realizing he didn’t know what to do, he had no experience with paralysis but had seen the way Charles had been treating his body earlier that day. Erik opted to lift Charles from his wheelchair, and onto the couch, lengthwise, even taking it upon himself to figure out Charles’ legs. And damn him, although he already knew, it was strange to see a complete lack of movement there.

Charles seemed to relax somewhat, “Thanks.”

Erik only straightened up to see Hank return from the back of the house. Hank looked from Erik to Charles, back to Erik again.

“Are you okay?”

Charles, without opening his eyes, replied, “It’s just my back.” And then almost to himself, “And Jean. I just…” he gestured vaguely.

Hank rolled his shoulders in an unstated, stressful agreement, “The kids are all sleeping. Including Jean.”

“Did you give Jean her medicine?”

Hank nodded, “She won’t wake up until we wake her in the morning, from what I understand this type of antipsychotic should dull her thinking enough that not even her dreams should be a risk to us.”

“Thank God, get us a drink, Hank, please. And Erik,” he said with his arm thrown over his eyes, “Take a bloody seat and stop standing there awkwardly. I told you, it was an accident, your guilt is going to drown me.”

Hank returned after some time, three glasses and a whiskey tumbler and in his hands. Charles started working his way upright, accepted a small glass gratefully, but before drinking it he took a long, slow smell. Charles never had and never would waste money on cheap whiskey.

Hank sunk into one the armchairs tiredly, pouring both him and Erik what amounted to a strong drink.

Erik sat down slowly in the other armchair, taking his drink. The couch and the two chairs a faded yellow tweed with fraying edges, Erik picked at them absently, “Even her dreams,” he said, “are of risk?”

Charles took a quiet sip, “You bet.”

“What does that even mean?”

Hank looked to Erik seriously, “If she has a nightmare, she brings it to life, at least as a hallucination for us. Terrible, horrible, nightmares. If she has a dream which upsets her, her emotions project. If she is having, let’s say a good, dream, it’s like a hit off some kind of drug. A rush of dopamine, as opposed to the rush of adrenaline or cortisol we might get from her nightmares.”

Erik looked dumbfounded. His drink was still untouched.

“She’s a weapon,” Charles says finishing his drink, “that’s why we’re so far away from everyone. And those men today, they wanted her for the same reason we’re protecting her. If we let this organization get to her, if we can’t keep her safe, then none of us will ever be safe again I should suspect.”

“What about the other kids here?”

Charles’ smile was a small one, “My first students. My first actual enrolled students. Jean was the third student enroll in my school, and by the time we realized how much a threat she was…well the other two students had nowhere to go, no homes, no parents, so they came here with us. They’re all in my legal custody.”

Erik looked at Charles with an air of respect, sipping slowly at his own drink, “So what are their stories then?”

Hank looked suddenly dubious but spoke up anyway, “Scott was our first student, he was in foster care when we found him. He came to us after we had heard reports of a young boy suddenly developing some of…well, the press called them lasers, but that’s hardly what they are,” Hank caught himself, “what they were I mean.”

Charles was awkwardly fumbling to pour a second drink, “By the time we got to him he’d been assaulted by some of the other boys in care, for being a mutant. Scott was hit so hard in the back of the head by another boy that he went blind instantly,” Charles’ tone turned somber, “We didn’t get to him in time…”

“Turns out the uh, lasers, were a part of a mutated function in his occipital lobe. Unfortunately, his brain has been healing for a year now and there have been no signs of recovery, the damage is probably done. We don’t know his mutation was also rendered non-functional, or if it will sort of,” Hank gestured scientifically somehow, “re-manifest or not.”

Erik exhaled, anger slowly boiling in his stomach, he forced it down, “What of the other two?”

“Ororo was our second student, she is a refugee. She came to us without family, speaking no English, and with close to little control over her mutation after a series of traumatic events, including witnessing the death of her own parents, and some other, more distasteful things. She killed the men who abused her after the death of her parents, electrocuted them until they were unrecognizable. I 'interveined' before the police did.  Jeanie, she’s a different story. She was being held in a psychiatric facility in New York when we found her, her parents had forfeited custody over Jean, being unable to handle her.”

“What’s did they say was wrong with her?” Erik looked from Charles, propped on the couch, not able to sit up entirely on his own, to Hank’s stiff form.

“The doctor’s said that she had early-onset schizophrenia,” Hank said, the last one to finish his first drink.

“But she doesn’t?”

“Clearly,” Charles said, massaging one of his legs absently, “She’s too strong a telepath with little to no control over her own mind.”

“Charles, Erik and I should tell you something Jean did earlier today, what she did to Erik,” Hank said. The slightest note of empathy in his voice, perhaps now only there is a drink in him.

Charles narrowed his eyes at Hank, “You didn’t tell me the whole truth before, did you?”

“Only because I wanted to talk to Erik alone.”

Charles decided he wanted to be facing Erik for whatever insanity he was about to learn, and pulled each leg off the couch, “One of you better speak up,” with the second whiskey in him Charles fumbled with his own body clumsily.

Hank said nothing so Erik said, “She knows about Cuba, Charles, about everything,” Erik took a breath, “I pulled my truck over to get some air and I got out and then Jean was in my head and she was screaming at me about…how I hurt you…and then…then,” Erik found himself lost for words, unable to describe the very psychic experience he’d had, after some prodding from Hank he started again, “Jean took your experience, the whole of it, from when you hit the ground to when you must have blacked out the first time, and…well…gave it to me.”

Charles looked more than skeptical, “What do you mean, she gave it to you?”

Hank, who hadn’t heard the whole story, looked more interested than anything.

“She like, made me feel it, I guess.”

“Charles, Erik was face down in the dirt when I found him.”

Charles looked at both of them, “What did you feel?” Charles said slowly, “Or should I ask, what you _didn’t_ feel?”

Erik and Charles locked eyes very suddenly, that experience had been Charles’ alone and now Erik of all people, had stolen that from him. Charles took a deep breath and reminded himself that it wasn’t Erik’s fault, that it was Jean who’d done it, in a silent and vindictive rage. Charles wanted to get up from the couch, but with two strong whiskey’s and a too soft couch, he wasn’t sure he could actually manage it. Charles usually took an armchair for this exact reason. He eyed his wheelchair, which was tad far away, he eyed Erik, he eyed Hank, and then he poured himself a third drink. If he was already prone and unable to get up on his own, if he emotions were already so close to the surface, and if Erik, his first lover, and Hank his current one, were both sat in the same room, and if was ready slightly drunk, Charles thought he might as well seal the deal.

That proved regretful later, Charles was still inebriated, out of his wheelchair, and Erik and Hank, also fairly inebriated, were caught completely off guard, when there came a loud knock at the door, and too many ferocious lights suddenly coming in through all the windows.


	5. They were just following orders.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Charles makes a tough decision, although it doesn't seem a very tough decision at all.

Charles was even less upright that he had been forty minutes ago. Hank was babbling away like the young genius that he was to Erik about a whole bunch of stuff he wouldn’t have understood if he were sober. But all the talking and smooth enjoyment of whiskey stopped very suddenly at the sound of three loud knocks, and a brilliant set of lights shining through all of the windows in the small cabin. Bathing everyone inside in a hash paleness, all three men made eye contact at once.

“Dr. Xavier,” came a male voice from the outside, at that Erik flicked the latch closed slowly on the door. Slow enough that maybe nobody would notice, if these men knew Charles was here there was a good chance, they didn’t know Erik was too, “and Dr. McCoy, please open the door, we have you surrounded on all sides.”

“I am under no obligation to let anyone into my house, for any reason. Unless you have a search warrant, I suggest you go back to wherever you came from,” Charles, despite being five whiskeys deep, sounded strangely sober.

“We don’t intend to ask a second time, Dr. Xavier.”

Charles gestured for Hank’s help but indicated to do it quietly, the young man heaved Charles to his feet with his arms under Charles’ armpits, less than dignified but they hadn’t the time and settled Charles into his chair.

“Jean is in my legal custody, you cannot remove her, even if you wanted to,” while speaking Charles busily dragged each foot to their footrests.

Suddenly the front door of the cabin was forced open and no less than fifteen men stood on the porch. The reason Charles hadn’t sensed them approaching became clear, they had, all of them, rudimentary versions of Shaw’s own helmet on their heads. Fear, not for the first time, grew as a thorny rose in Charles’ stomach.

Fortunately, nobody had been expecting Erik’s presence because each helmet was made of heavy, thick metal. Erik had that horrible, sick look on his face. The same look he had on the beach that day, it made Charles want to vomit.

Erik didn’t even get up from his chair, barely raised a finger, and did not put down his drink, when he wrenched the helmet off every man in the house, on the porch, and in the yard. Each gun froze with the bullet in its chamber. But before Charles let Erik take it any further, he rose a hand to his temple and froze stiff every single person in the general vicinity. This included the children, both Erik and Hank, and Sean, who was unseen from the living room but bound and gagged on the front lawn.

Charles took a deep breath, in and out, in…and…then he felt for every soldier, every man who did not belong there, the three men held captive in the shed outside, he searched for their minds, clear, bright, bundles of nerve endings against the cool night sky. He could’ve shut them down there but he went further. Perhaps he was angry, perhaps he was tired of being seen as weak and broken and tragic, perhaps it was the whiskey, or perhaps Charles had been a different person ever since that coin passed through his fucking head. For a moment only he felt that he was on a roller coaster, his stomach rose into his mouth but the drop never came. Still holding his breath, he traveled slowly down their delicate cervical vertebra, through the spinal cord, and thought about ending it there. But he took it further still, he traveled through thin intercostal nerves supplying their torsos, he went further, and found the heart, he found the lungs, and still latched onto the brains of the soldiers, he took one more long breath, steadied himself, and pulled.

All the men, every single one of them, hit the ground, dying before they could even blink. Their helmets, which had been suspended midair, hit the ground afterward.  
Charles released everyone who was left. An eerie silence descended.

Erik’s mouth ran dry.

Hank, still standing from helping Charles off the couch, looked horrified.

Sean screamed through a gag which muffled him. His face pressed into the cold dirt of the driveway.

Charles eased both Scott and Ororo back to sleep with careful thought. His body buzzed with a power he’d never exercised.

Erik looked around slowly, knowing only a few seconds had passed between these men thinking they had had the upper hand and-

“Yes, Erik, they’re dead, all of them.” Charles pushed his chair forward quietly, weaving between the few who’d actually made it inside. On the porch, he took a careful breath, sliding down the small ramp and moving toward Sean cautiously. Charles reached down to him as best he could, undoing the gag and unbinding his wrists.

“Sean, did they hurt you?”

Sean stayed down, his eyes hot and red, “I think they broke my fucking arm,” he managed.

Upon inspection, it did, indeed, appear broken, twisted at an unnatural angle, “Lean on my chair, Sean,” Charles locked the breaks and struggled to help him up, “That’s it, Hank will look at it, come on.”

But every step was agony for him, “My fucking arm, holy shit…”

“Sean, no, no,” Charles stopped his chair again, “don’t look at it, Sean, don’t!” Charles reached out to steady Sean in fear of him fainting and damaging his arm more thoroughly. He called for Hank.

After a few moments Hank stepped slowly out of the cabin and into the porch light, “Hank,” Charles said from the bottom of the ramp, “Sean needs a hospital, his arm is very badly broken, you’ve got to take him right now. If they ask how it happened to make something up, give fake names, I’ll cover the bill.”

Hank, still in shock, nodded slowly. The situation having sobered him more than a black cup of coffee and some toast ever could of. Descending slowly, glanced down at Sean’s arm, wished he hadn’t, and then led him to the van. As the headlights came on, another ten or so men lay dead in the driveway.

Charles struggled up the ramp, which was always steep on the incline, but suddenly felt so weak he was unable to. Charles let out a frustrated cry as the van made its way away from the cabin, he could kill so many men in an instant but he couldn’t get up the four steps inside. Everything washed over Charles at once as he sat angrily at the bottom of his own porch. He yelled again, this time louder, smashing the side of his wheelchair with his fist.

A scene played in his head, one of himself, stepping out from the wreckage of the plane in Cuba. It was a vision from the past, from a less burdened self, pleading with Erik not to kill the men in the water. _They’re just following orders_ , Charles had said.

He looked at the dead around him now. Gone from their lives in an instant.

_They’re just following orders. They’re just following orders. They’re just following orders. They’re just following orders. They’re just following orders. They’re just following orders._

Charles tried the ramp again, only to find it agonizing, it had never been so hard. This time though, instead of easing back down his right wheel caught the lip and he toppled, ungracefully, onto the ground. Erik, having heard too much, walked out onto the porch, standing directly under the buggy porch light, and looked drawn. Upon seeing Charles struggling on the ground, walked slowly up to him, but made no effort to assist.

Charles lay on his back, in the dirt, a leg twisted up awkwardly under his wheelchair, watching Erik slowly join him on the ground. They both, stayed still, in the half dark of the night. Erik thought about Charles, the man he had been, and the man he was now. Around them lay twenty-two corpses of dead men, men who had just been following orders.

Charles scoffed, “And what would you have done?”

“The same, probably.”

“Then, what’s all this emotional bullshit you’ve got going on right now?”

“Its that _you_ killed them, Charles,” Erik looked over to Charles, “that it was _you_.”

At this, Charles paused, and a shaky voice welled up from somewhere he didn’t recognize, “You were right,” he said it so quietly that Erik asked him to repeat himself, “You were right all along. And I disagreed with you and look where it got me,” Charles gestured to his body, his legs, the steps, his chair, to everything really, “Imagine had I just agreed…”

The cool air grew colder at that.

“I never wanted to be right, Charles. And I certainly never wanted to hurt you,” Erik looked at Charles with real empathy.

A long, painful silence came next and lasted a good ten minutes. After which Charles whispered, “Help me…please.”

Without so much as a word, Erik uncurled himself from where he sat, untangled Charles from his wheelchair, and carried him wordlessly inside, leaving him on the couch. A few minutes later and Erik reappeared, pushing Charles’ chair.

Unremarkably he said, “We have to look at your leg.”

“What about my leg? My leg is,” Charles looked down to the leg which had taken the brunt of the impact when he fell from the ramp, “bleeding apparently.”

With Charles still on the couch and Erik sitting in his wheelchair, Erik balanced Charles’ leg on his own. Peeling up the pant leg to reveal a long, fairly deep gash, that was bleeding steadily.

Charles cursed; Hank was going to kill him.

Erik squeezed some gunk from the wound hesitantly.

“Don’t bother,” Charles said, “I can’t feel it anyway.”

Erik hummed, left the room, came back with a cold compress, and cleaned the wound slowly, it continued to bleed, “If it doesn’t stop bleeding, we might be headed for the hospital ourselves.”

Charles looked angry, “Can’t you just stitch it up or something, you’ve done so for yourself, I know you have.”

“Normally, I would consider it, but if this gets infected, you’ll never know, you won’t feel it, so no. We’re going to the hospital.” Erik wrapped a clean bandage around Charles' leg but didn’t miss the boniness of his atrophying leg muscle, “Plus, from what little I understand, an infection will kill you more easily than a person without a spinal cord injury.”

Charles crossed his arms but knew Erik was right. 


	6. Tonic Clonic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles has a seizure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: for horror and body horror

It wasn’t until they were more than halfway to the hospital that Erik began to have serious concerns for Charles’ safety. Not only must he have become woozy from the blood loss, but he had begun to act strangely. Erik watched him out of the corner of his eye while keeping his attention on the road. 

Charles appeared disorientated, whispering to no one at all, “We’ve been here before.”

Erik took a second to glance over at Charles, who now was staring blankly out the windshield, bent forward, leaning fully on his seatbelt. He looked to the three children in the back seat, only Scott stirred. 

Erik felt suddenly that something was very wrong, “Charles?” He extended his hand to help him into a more comfortable position. His body upper body seemed much like his lower body, limp, motionless. Erik’s heart rose up into his mouth. What the fuck was happening? 

His condition worsened quickly. Charles appeared incoherent now, grinding his teeth, his eyelids opening and shutting with no real purpose. 

Erik didn’t like this at all. He pressed on the gas, his arm still protectively over Charles’ chest. From what Charles had told him, the hospital should only be another five minutes, if Erik sped. He figured it was worth the risk. 

After another minute for so, Charles’ breathing worsened. 

Terrible pain in his head caused Erik to swerve into the oncoming lane, but it was late, and there was no traffic. Erik course corrected, now seeing the hospital, and pressed harder on the gas pedal, urging the truck past sixty-five miles per hour. His vision swam. 

The rest was a blur. Erik figured that whatever was going on with Charles was being projected by telepathy, which was a problem itself. Erik’s skin was hot.  
He remembered making it to the hospital in one piece, barely. It was a tiny little place, he prayed they could help. 

By the time he had pulled up to the ER doors, he was running on complete autopilot. Slamming on the breaks, he saw Hank sprinting out into the light of the carpark. He looked devastated. Had Charles projected this far?

Erik crossed the front of the car, headlights still shone brightly, Charles was now fully tonic colonic. He pushed past Hank; Charles nearly impossible to hold. Erik’s own steps faltered as he neared the double doors, intense exhaustion mounting him. His bones and muscles and body felt weighed down. Erik burned. 

Hank was saying words that Erik couldn’t hear, probably calling for help. 

Erik heard, “Seizure, seizure,” and then maybe, “he’s not breathing.” He had a funny taste in his mouth, coffee? Blood? 

What about the kids?

What about Sean?

Erik’s vision narrowed, his head swam, and then, darkness descended, much like the power going out inside his head. Around him people were wailing, invisible people. All his body screamed and screamed and he felt, Charles somehow, being part of him. And that couldn’t be good. 

********  
The last thing he remembered was being carried through the dark to the passenger seat of Erik’s truck. 

No, the very last thing he remembered was the taste of black coffee in his mouth. 

No, even after that he remembered looking at the kids in the back seat and smiling. 

Or was it the coffee? Had he been laughing with Erik? Had the windows really been down, had that been cold air on his face? Had he been laughing with Erik, thinking about how things had been before? 

Except Charles was paralyzed now, and one-year of stress had made Erik and old man. And there were three kids in the back seat. Werethey his kids? Could he even have kids?  
He felt the wind now, cold and perfect. And Erik’s hands on the steering wheel tightened. Charles felt like he was floating like things were slow and fast like time was dripping away all around him. 

“Wake up.” 

Had Erik said that? No, Erik was still laughing at a joke Charles couldn’t remember. He looked in the rear-view mirror. 

“Wake up.”

Charles kept looking, all three kids where asleep. 

“Wake up.”

Where were they driving? He looked at his legs, flowers grew from a wound on his thigh, a wound he didn’t remember getting. Charles touched the flowers. He touched his leg, noticing that he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel either leg for that matter. Charles tried to move his feet, but they were immobile. It didn’t upset him, he just wondered when he’d become paralyzed and what had happened. He touched the flowers again. They were growing. 

“Wake up,” Charles looked into the back seat again, “wake up.” 

It was Jean, but Jean was old now. Older than Charles could ever hope to be. Older than anyone he’d ever know, except, she still looked young. How was that? Old and young, slow and fast? And her voice wasn’t her voice, it was a voice he’d never heard, “Wake up,” her voice was many voices, and it spilled from her mouth and filled the car. Charles was drowning in it, “wake up, wake up, wake up.”

Charles looked to the road ahead of them, pure dark, ebony pavement, the road to forever. Nothing on either side. 

Suddenly, there were bodies in the road and they were all screaming from closed mouths. 

“Wake up.” 

They grew closer and Charles screamed for Erik to stop the car. 

Erik didn’t. 

“Wake up.” 

Charles looked to the back seat. 

Jean’s head rolled from her body, “Wake up,” her bodiless head repeated, “wake up!”

Charles looked to the driver’s seat, terrified, Erik’s body was gone. In place was Jean’s body, without her head, “Wake up!” She was screaming, the lack of sensation was stretching itself up Charles’ body like a parasite greedy for feeling, and just as the car collided with the unmoving bodies in the road, “You have to wake up!”

So, Charles woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The type of seizure is a temporal one, which can account for many different symptoms including Loss of awareness of surroundings  
> Staring, Lip smacking, Repeated swallowing or chewing, Unusual finger movements, such as picking motions, and uncontrolled blinking. 
> 
> An aura can come first, in this chapter the aura was his disconnectedness and deja vu experience. Temporal seizures rarely become tonic clonic, but they can. Charles is a more severe version of what's possible, but still very possible. I take liberties with his hallucinationtory vision, he's a psychic afterall. 
> 
> Last chapter, perhaps only a few people noticed the line describing Charles feeling like he's riding a roller coaster. This is also an aura for temporal seizures. Suggesting that maybe his sudden outburst and uncharacteristic violence(personality changes and sudden outbursts of rage are complications of temporal seizures)have been due to a seizure. That is why he was so weak at the end of chapter 5. 
> 
> There are a few possibilities as to why Charles is having seizures. I'm not revealing that. Whether or not he's had them before is also a secret, if you want to know, you have to keep reading.
> 
> If you want to know more about temporal seizures you can follow the link below. 
> 
> https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/temporal-lobe-seizure/symptoms-causes/syc-20378214


	7. Damage Done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles finds out that he did himself a good one

Everything moved very slowly.

Two eyes open, the taste of coffee gone. He reached down, feeling for the stitches in his leg. A hand grabbed his, returning to his chest. That felt better, his hands on his chest and a hand on his hands. His arms were very heavy.

Charles had seized for an hour after having gotten to the hospital, no amount of medication seemed to be enough to bring him around.

Charles managed a sound. He had meant it to be a word but what came out was nonsense.

“Charles, don’t try and move,” a gentle and short kiss to his forehead, “You’re in the hospital, you’re okay now,” the sound of Hank’s voices calmed him some.

Charles manages a small, “waht?” He felt the word came out with the letters in the wrong order.

“You had a seizure again. A bad one.”

Charles closes his eyes.

Somewhere in the distance was the smell of anesthetic. If there was one smell Charles recognized it was the smell prior to surgery; worry, anticipation, the smell of sleep and the chemicals used to induce it. But Charles was too apathetic to be afraid.  

The next time he opened them was only long enough to see Hank at the edge of his bed, talking to a doctor. It sounded like gibberish to Charles. He knew that was a bad sign. He watched as Hank followed the doctor from the room and then closed his eyes again. He didn’t think he’d ever been so tired.

Four doors down and one floor up Hank, Erik, and the doctor stood in the pale blue light of the radiology department. Beyond them, on the other side of a glass wall, a horrific machine loomed. Nurses still working on cleaning the room, bustled slowly around. Charles’ blood was on the floor. The doctor really had managed to pass that thin tube all the way into Charles’ brain. Charles’ brilliant, beautiful, apparently broken brain.

For just a moment Erik saw Schmitt there, grinning widely, and the coin Erik had used to kill him, coming slowly out the back of his head, “She didn’t do this Erik,” Schmitt whispered, “you did.”

By the time Erik looked back up at Hank and the doctor he was sweating. He staggered out into the hall. Whatever news Hank would drum up, he’d tell Erik himself.

After some time, Hank came into the hall as well. He took a breath and, on the exhale, Hank landed a soil, rippling blue fist into the drywall. Erik had mistaken Hank’s calm demeanor; Hank was angry. Very, very angry. It was a fit of anger he recognized. Erik bristled himself. He was unsure what the doctor had said but he didn’t think it was good. Hank took another fistful of drywall, and another, and didn’t stop until his hand was bleeding.

Erik knew that this was the kind of anger you had when you loved someone but couldn’t help them. Erik had loved women, men, he’d loved people and hurt a lot of them. He realized slowly that Charles hadn’t been an exception. Erik felt suddenly that maybe he shouldn’t be here. He turned to leave, Hank still composing himself in the background.

When there were about one hundred feet between them Hank said, “This wasn’t his first seizure,” and as Erik turned to look at Hank, “He’s got a lesion, on his temporal lobe.”

Erik wanted to ask how it had happened. He didn’t even really know what a lesion was. But the answer grew on him, a realization he hadn’t considered.

_The coin._

Erik could hear it drop, even now, on the linoleum. A small sound in the great, vast void, that was Erik and his guilt.

“You broke his back and his brain, Erik.”

Erik paled, “Hank…I…”

“Save it, Erik,” Hank said quietly, barely loud enough to be heard, and then said more loudly, “After what he did tonight, the lesion is…worse…I don’t know how but he managed to give himself brain damage. He hasn’t been the same since that coin, since Shaw died inside his head,” a pause, a sigh, “I often wonder if it wasn’t Charles who died in Shaw’s head instead.”

That was enough for Erik. He’d heard enough. He’d seen enough. He should’ve never agreed to come out here, to help. A wave of anger boiled roughly inside of him. It moved through his body, a burning heat, a forest fire, burning parts of him to ash. He turned and walked away; he didn’t stop. He heard Hank behind him telling him to run away like he’d always done. To run away like he’d done at the beach. Underneath his feet the clean tile was hot sand, Erik staggered but regained his footing. He took the stairs, looming downward, down past the first floor where Erik exited, and into a dark basement.

Erik didn’t stop walking until he met the cool night air and the car park. He saw the pine trees all around the hospital leaning widely against each other, they called his name. He thought of Poland again. Of his mother. Of his many, many guilty memories. The air cooled him somehow, soothed the roiling anger inside of him. Maybe it was the cold air that stopped him getting into his truck, maybe it was his guilt, maybe it was Charles’ presence, still pooling dumbly at the back of his head, or maybe it was the muted Jean, coating him in the smell of cinnamon,  _you can’t leave, this is where you’re supposed to be._

When Erik thought backward in time, he realized that things seemed strange. For instance, he couldn’t remember why he’d driven all the way up here, where Raven was, in fact, he didn’t even remember anything that happened before seeing Charles at the gas station. He felt dizzy and sat down slowly on the curb.

He felt small again, a boy, a _Jew,_ being taught that he was worth nothing more than the dirt he was forced to live in. And there was Schmitt again, reminding Erik that he was worthless. He couldn’t save his mother. That he couldn’t move the coin, not when he’d needed to.

That he couldn’t save Charles.

_No,_ that wasn’t true, _Charles hadn’t needed saving._

Erik could feel Schmitt’s hand there, squeezing his shoulder

Was this where he was supposed to be? Was Jean telling the truth? What did she know that the rest of them were unaware of?

Not for the first time since arriving, Erik felt like something wasn’t adding up. Like something was out of place. As if time were a string unraveling. Like everything was unraveling. Erik wondered strangely if all the bodies in the yard would’ve gotten up and left by the time they’d returned like this was all a bad dream. _A nightmare._ Maybe he’d wake up in bed, his face pressed into Charles’ neck.

_Erik wondered if Jean hadn’t called him here, for some reason which she chose not to reveal. If he left now, what would happen? Would Jean even let him leave? Was this a non-negotiable agreement? Was he a prisoner? A prisoner to a nine-year-old girl? What the fuck was even going on?_  He wished desperately that he had his helmet.

A more familiar voice found his feet at the back of Erik's head, drifted slowly to the front of his skull like a phantom.

_Erik._

_Charles._

_I thought I’d died._

A long consideration.

_Hank says you gave yourself brain damage, doing what you did to those men._

_Well, that explains it. I’ve never had a seizure that lasted more than a few minutes._

_Jean was in my head not long ago, she told me that I couldn’t leave because I was where I was supposed to be._

There was a pregnant, distinctive silence, _were you going to leave?_

_I was thinking about it._ Erik couldn't help notice that all the air smelt of burnt matches. He wondered if that Jean, slowly burning the world to the ground. Erik felt very sure that something horrible was about to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The procedure used to locate things like brain lesions in the 1960s was called Cerebral angiography. CT and MRI technology hadn't yet been invented. Basically, a catheter would be inserted into a large artery (sometimes through the main artery in the neck), and then passed through the circulatory system and into the vessels in the brain. By using contrast dye, a doctor could take a series of radiographs to see the vessels in the brain and if there were any blockages, aneurysms, or lesions.
> 
> If you wanted to learn more here's a basic wiki article describing the basics:  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_angiography


	8. Oddly Enough

When they all finally made it home, the bodies which had been strewn across the front lawn were gone. Which was odd. Perhaps it wasn’t odd, perhaps it was simply terrifying. Numerous men had been killed that day, had their minds invaded from an outside force, had their hearts and lungs, and nervous system shut down non-consensually. And Charles knew he was the one to blame. He had destroyed the lives of men in seconds and had torn their families asunder. Erik had been ready to kill too though, the bullets from their guns frozen firmly in their hot chambers. Even further Charles had found something in Erik’s head that night. Erik’s mind awash with whiskey, Charles had found a secret there, just as easily as Erik had halted the trajectory of the ammo, he’d also been prepared to use a part of his power he’d withheld from Charles. Erik had had a grip on the iron in the blood of those men and was planning to tear it from their bodies, leaving only bone and tissue left behind; empty sacks of skin.

Equally as terrifying.

More unsettling was the idea that the corpses had up and walked away.

“I don’t think we should stay here,” Charles called from the front seat of Erik’s truck.

Standing in the lowly lit yard Hank and Erik and the three children and Sean all had tall, awkward shadows. What light there was cast out into the forest. Dark and twisted and small.

They all stood silently.

Charles’ wheelchair, which should’ve been where they left it, was upright and neatly parked on the porch. Next, to it, a note, written in poor penmanship, was tacked crudely into the door. Hank moved close to it, not letting his guard down. Without touching it he read it aloud, eyes wide behind his thick glasses.

 

_The girl dies. xx_

 

Erik gawked, hand protectively placed atop Jean’s head, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“We can’t stay here,” Charles looked quietly around the woods, nervously licking his lips.

“It means what it says, Erik.” Hank looked at him sternly, “Charles is right, we have to go. You and Sean pack the kids up, we’re leaving, we have to.”

\----------

With the kids loaded, Jean’s medicine in the glovebox, and a trunk of clothes, pillows, and blankets, Hank started the van. Sean took shotgun, still doped out on painkillers and barely awake. Erik had tied down Charles’ chair to the bed of his truck and had climbed in next to Charles, who appeared half-conscious in the passenger seat. Hank and Erik had decided to keep Charles where he was, lest exhaust him further. Erik fussed over him for a few minutes before backing out, down the long road, with sinister trees and thick underbrush on either side.

“We can’t stay here,” Charles got out, “we can’t.”

Erik tried to soothe him, “We know, Liebling, we’re leaving.”

Aside from the small conversation Erik had had with Charles directly after his seizure, all he seemed capable of saying now was that they had to leave. Jean too, had been dead silent, saying nothing at all.

For just a moment after they’d made it onto the main road Charles seemed to struggle with his body as if he’d forgotten that his legs didn’t work. Erik thought that it was probably a bad sign.

Over the next few hours, Erik followed Hank tensely further north. Charles still lay limply, silently, and seemingly unresponsive. It wasn’t until the sun began to rise that Hank turned off into the parking lot of a small motel. The kind with drive up rooms and maybe six or seven vacancies. Erik parked the truck and let Hank foot the bill. They paid for one room, under a different name, and tried their hardest to unload Charles without anyone seeing him. He was a recognizable sight, unfortunately, not too many young people around northern Maine, and certainly fewer young people in wheelchairs.

They were quick about it. Erik urged the children into the room and Hank busily bundled Charles in a thick woolen blanket. After a few minutes, he seemed satisfied and eased Charles out of the truck, carrying him easily into the room. Erik locked the door and pulled the shades. A gloominess fell slowly, only the dull light of an old lamp to light their way. The kids all climbed onto the bed with Charles, concerned by his lack of animation. Jean, though, was visibly upset.

“Why does his voice feel all mushy in my head?” Jean’s voice cut unexpectantly, causing both Erik and Hank to make eye contact.

Hank sighed and picked Jean up carefully as if she was something contagious, “His brain has had a weird thing happen to it.”

“What kind of weird thing?”

To Erik, standing on his own by the window, Jean seemed to have a small smirk on her face.

“Well,” Hank started, “his brain is a lot like yours, Jean. And sometimes your brain gets too overwhelmed, his got really, really overwhelmed, and now it needs a break.”

\----------

A few hours later and everyone was asleep. Erik stood outside the door, a cigarette tucked carefully between his upper and lower lip. As if it was the last cigarette in the world, Erik worked on it slowly. He was halfway finished with it when Hank stepped exhaustedly through the door and onto the concrete walkway.

Hank didn’t say anything, pulling his sweater tighter around himself.

Erik offered him a smoke, and surprisingly Hank took it with a slightly shaking hand. He brought it to his mouth and watched as Erik struck the match.

Hank coughed on the smoke, waving it away with an absent hand. 

“I just wanted to thank you.”

Erik blew some smoke out his nose, “For what?”

“You saved his life, the gash on his leg, the seizure…had you waited I don’t really know what might have happened.”

Erik only nodded, thinking that maybe he could smell the distant smell of lavender in the air, of Charles, floating there without his body.

Hank took another, unpracticed drag.

“The bodies,” Erik said, this time not treasuring tobacco he took a long puff, holding in his mouth, and then letting it out, “They disappeared. Which means they either got up and walked away, or someone is hot on our trail.” Erik’s cigarette burned out, only the ugly butt end left. He stomped out with his boot, “And now they know what they’re up against. Next time they catch us it’s not going to be pretty.”

Hank looked at Erik nervously.

“We need camouflage. A new car, new names, new clothes, a new story. What’s our plan, where are we even going?”

Hank put the cigarette in his mouth, took a drag, coughed, “There is a safe house. In Canada. There is a man who can help us, someone we met last year, I even think you, you and Charles, met him briefly.”

It was just then that Jean began to scream, having woken up, even under the influence of her medication. Inside the room the walls were hot and the wallpaper was melting. The air burned to breathe. Charles’ eyes were open. Scott was covering his years and Orono was covering her eyes. After a quick glance around Hank grabbed Jean and some more medication, this time a clear, milky fluid. With the deftness of a practiced hand, Hank pushed the needle into her hip, but Jean fought him.

She was yelling loudly words that were mostly unintelligible, but as the air cooled and her anger began to abate, she whispered quietly, that she had seen the future. Repeating her vision over and over as she began to sleep.

“The future, the future, I saw the future!”

Behind them, on the other bed, Charles had woken up just as suddenly, grasping wildly at Erik, eyes huge and full of tears, he looked much like a man who’d been saved from drowning as if he’d just remembered how to breathe. He yelled about how Jean had shown him the future. He yelled about how they couldn’t stay there and how they had to leave. More worrisome though was how Charles couldn’t remember things, especially about what had happened to his legs. He knew he was paralyzed but couldn’t remember how it had happened. He knew his back was broken but couldn’t remember what had broken it. He knew he had children but didn’t know how he’d come to have guardianship.

He remembered Hank but couldn’t remember Erik at all.   


	9. Ouroboros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter, more to come soon.

“Do you remember the recovery at all?”

Charles looked weakly at his wheelchair, “No.”

“And you don’t remember getting hurt?”

“No.”

“But you know that you were hurt?”

“Yes, for fuck's sake, yes.”

Hank pushed his sleeves up and leaned back against the window sill, “Okay, so you’ve just got to re-learn everything. Maybe your memory will come back.”

Charles looked at Hank and couldn’t help feel a mess of emotion, most in what part of his abdomen he could still feel. It wasn’t so much _butterflies in his stomach_ as it was butterflies in his chest, “I don’t know how to do this, Hank.”

Hank followed Charles’ eyes from the bed to his chair. He looked at Charles again, “It’s fine for now, I’ll help you.”

Much to Charles own qualms, letting Hank help him felt comfortable, it felt safe. Charles still felt exhausted, he felt small and confused. He balked some as Hank helped him to manipulate his lower body. Much to Charles’ fear and dismay there remained a total lack of sensation and movement. Hank had indicated he’d already been through all of this, but as far as he was concerned, this was very…unexpected.

As Hank began to help him with his shoes, Charles watched as a man, who seemed…vaguely familiar, ushered three kids and a teenager with a broken arm, outside into the carpark. The man made scrupulous eye contact with him before quickly closing the door. Charles almost had a name for the face, _almost_. It was like the taste of lingering memory.

“Charles,” Hank said, reclaiming his attention, “I need to tell you something, in case you don’t remember what the doctors said.”

Charles looked at Hank a little sadly, Hank nodded quietly, “But I’ll show you everything again, just like before I’ll take care of you,” Hank gave his ankle a small squeeze, knowing that Charles couldn’t feel it, “You remember us,” Hank’s voice was small now, “don’t you?”

“Of course,” Charles felt his eyes growing hot, “Of course.”

Hank pressed his forehead slowly against Charles’, but hesitated a while before going on, “Do you remember Erik?”

Charles inhaled, placing a tentative hand against the back of Hank’s skull, gently rubbing at the two topmost cervical vertebrae, “Who?”

“That man, who just left the room? Do you remember him?”

“I…he’s like a…like déjà vu almost…like a memory that might have been a dream. Like a dream…like a dream you can’t remember after you’ve woken up. I know I’ve had a dream, but the more time passes the less I remember it.”

For a short and vindictive moment, Hank wondered if everything might be okay. Would Charles be less bitter now? Could Charles love him the way he had loved Erik if Erik had never happened?  In that moment Hank decided not to tell Charles what had really happened, he decided he’d lie. He’d make up a story about a fall or a car accident, he had wanted Erik gone from their lives ever since Erik had left them on that beach to die, and now…well, now Hank might have his chance.

Hank withdrew from Charles, giving him a slow kiss, and then standing, “You’re going to have to learn how to use that thing,” he said pointedly, “but for now, I’ll help you into the van.”

Charles nodded slowly. He planned on asking Hank what had happened to him, but right now he couldn’t shake a deep sense of foreboding. It clung to him like sweat. What he knew was this: he knew, for instance, that Jean and Scott, and Ororo, were his children, and that they were running from something terrible. He also knew that Jean had shown him an enormous, horrible world full of fire and pain. She told him that it was the future. He knew that man, Erik, was here for some reason and they had a history together, but couldn’t even remember where they had met. He knew that he’d gone through something painful, and as a result, couldn’t feel his legs. He knew he’d been through this before, this whole, accepting his injury bullshit. He knew, from the look on Hank's face, that the doctors had already given him a prognosis. He knew that there was something nobody was talking about. He knew he’d killed men, and he remembered some of the seizure he’d recently had, but only in bits and pieces. Charles remembered waking up and being terrified that he couldn’t use his arms either, but then realizing that he had only been very tired. He remembered his relationship with Hank, but only in feelings and emotions, not in actual memories. He remembered that he loved Hank, that they were _in love._

Charles wondered to himself quietly as Hank helped him into a seat, showing him how to handle his nonworking legs, and pulling the seatbelt across his chest for him if they weren’t running from Jean. Jean, silent and insidious, showing him forests and people and cities on fire. What if they were taking Jean where she needed to go, and that instead of running from what was behind them, they were running into it? Whatever it was.

As Hank pulled Charles’ seat belt across him, he wondered how he could keep the memory of what actually happened to Charles from him. How does one lie to a telepath?

After having situated himself next to Charles, checking on Sean in the front seat, Erik turned the van on and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving his truck behind them. The last of anything they’d see for a long while grew smaller and smaller in the distance. Ahead of them, an empty road curled onward, a snake unfurling itself. Charles wondered all this pavement and travel and effort wasn’t an Ouroboros. He wondered if perhaps they were only an infinite snake, returning eventually to itself and consuming itself whole. He wondered if they were a shepherd of death.

When Charles’ leg began to spasm he didn’t notice. It wasn’t until Hank applied firm downward pressure to the top of his knee, and that Charles saw his hand there, did he feel sick. What should have been warm, human contact, was nonexistent. He watched as Hank’s hand pressed firmer and firmer until the spasm stopped. Hank moved to take his hand away but Charles grasped it firmly. Their fingers intertwining. After a few minutes, Hank caught Erik’s eyes in the review mirror, slightly sad, empty, somewhat painful. Hank didn’t care and only untangled their hands to rest his wide palm on Charles thinning leg. Charles’ head dropped tiredly to Hank's shoulder. It wouldn’t be until later that everything really went to hell.


	10. Past Tense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles recovers a few memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for derogatory language.

That night Charles dreamt that he found himself outside, on his own legs, feet cold in the wet grass. _Wait, his feet were cold. He could feel his feet_. Gone was the slight atrophy, and the numbness Charles knew to be permanent. And he was standing. But then the grass, like a nightmare, melted away, into something hot. Agonizing. There were these sounds and all the light in the world was too bright.  The sounds were loud, and nasty, popping near his ears. He remembers being young and making popcorn on the stove with his Raven. _Pop. Pop. Pop._ A memory inside a memory. One last noise and his whole body is on fire. In his memory, there are no faces, nothing to distinguish one person from another. But God, would someone take his fire out of his body. Someone shifts him and all the sand in his eyes falls away. Someone shifts him and then the fire explodes, like tossing a match into gasoline. Charles felt quite sure he was screaming. Someone shifts him and suddenly all the gasoline pours out of his body and oh, he can’t feel his legs.

All the pain becomes pleasure, leaving his body reeling, as that man, Erik, puts his teeth on Charles’ collar bone. Erik’s got a hand on Charles' throat. He likes Erik, he realizes in this memory, but he doesn’t like _this_. Not Erik’s hand on his throat. As if Erik could tighten his grip and end it all. And those teeth. Charles doesn’t like it as Erik draws blood and then kisses him on the mouth. But Erik, Charles knows, loves it. And then there’s Hank, blushing violently as he comes upon them in the hall. And they make eye contact as if Hank wants to say, “I don’t like it either.”

But then time stops, and the floor melts away, and the wall comes apart, and Charles hears himself, sobbing. A moment longer and he’s in his hospital bed again. Hank’s half holding him. Hank is moving the hair from his forehead and kissing it gently. Hank’s got the back of Charles’ head in his hand, applying a little pressure.

Hank is holding Charles, legs unmoving, unmatched in their heaviness, until the sounds Charles is making grow smaller and smaller, until they’re barely noises at all, “Hank, what am I going to do?”

Hank knows that maybe, just maybe, a small portion of that question his about having just found out that he’d probably never walk again, although Charles had accepted that news with an exhausted grace, but he also knew the staggering question to be about Erik and Raven. Charles’ hospital gown slipped to reveal a small pink scar on his collar bone. Hank realizes that it’s only one of the scars Erik left. Another was the scar tissue forming around Charles spinal cord right now, worsening the paralysis. One scar from the actual surgery, and all the little scars left by the stitches. That scar on his collar bone, maybe the size of one tooth. And of course, the massive scar left when Erik vanished that day, leaving the Cuban heat behind him. Hank wondered which scar would hurt the most while it healed. 

“You’re,” Hank began but decided instead, “We’re going to do what the doctors say you need to do to get better, even if there’s no improvement once the swelling subsides and I’m going to be there every…part of the way, for you, to support you,” Hank takes Charles’ hand in his own, “Because I love you and care about you, and nothing will change that.” Charles glances at Hank slowly, but Hank knows what he’s thinking, “Not even this, Charles.”

Charles is swatting gently at the tears on his face. He has to be strong because he’s always been strong. When his stepbrother had threatened to hurt Raven, he had stepped in only to get the shit beaten out of him. He broke a few ribs that day, but not before Charles had seized control of Cain, inserting a fake terror in the back of his mind, so he’d never touch Raven again. Raven who'd left him now. In the back of his mind, Charles always knew that Raven would grow up and leave, as every sibling does. He missed her, but not like he missed Erik.

Charles had had to be strong when his stepfather tried to put him on medication for the voices he was hearing, it was either that or ECT. So, he pretended to take them, once in the morning and once at night. Charles knew by then that he wasn’t schizophrenic, so he’d put the pill in his mouth, pushed it under his tongue, and then went upstairs to spit it into the toilet.

He had to be strong the first time he was called a faggot. He was at Oxford, and word got around. A man he liked, who Charles was aware was also queer, given his penchant for, well, telepathy, made it known in front of the other men living on his floor that Charles was a faggot and that he was very, very much straight. For good measure, one man had added that they burned those type of people in the camps. Charles wondered now what Erik would have done, come close to killing them probably. But Charles went on to graduate, top of his class. Only to meet a man, fall in love, and then have his back broken. Those men probably would have told Charles he was asking for it.

And now here he was, holding the hand of another man. But this time Hank was gentle with him. And not, Charles sensed, because he was newly injured. Hank had always wanted to be gentle with Charles. Because Hank was a good man. Oh, how Charles wished now Hank’s interest hadn’t gone over his head, how he wished Erik hadn’t been so intoxicating. Erik had been more like strong liquor, like something you don’t drink because it tastes good. You don’t drink liquor because it’s good for you, you drink liquor because of how it makes you feel; _invincible, dangerous, lacking in self-preservation, angry_. And if you drink too much, chances are, you’re going to get hurt. But it hadn’t been Charles getting behind the wheel of a car or taking a nose dive into a swimming pool that had landed him the hospital with a broken back, it was trusting Erik. Charles followed him into a war, but he wasn’t a soldier like Erik, he was an academic in no shape to be around violence and guns and anger like that. Erik had taken advantage of his probity. And then, on top of everything else he’d ripped the bullet out and left him on the beach, essentially sealing his fate, Charles was never going to walk again.

But just in case Hank thought that maybe the swelling might recede enough for some improvement to be made, that maybe the injury would be re-diagnosed from complete to incomplete, Charles began to seize. It would be the first seizure of many to come. And when Hank had seen the first images of the blood vessels in Charles' brain a few days later, when he had seen the lesion on Charles’ temporal lope, he could’ve murdered Erik. It was another scar he’d left behind. Scarring on the temporal lobe, left by the projection of the coin as it passed through Charles’ head.

The first seizure destabilized Charles’ spine and the broken vertebrae which had been somewhat fixed in the first surgery, and unknown to them at the time, had worsened the damage by fully severing his spinal cord. The following seizures left Charles disorientated and confused. For weeks Hank stood vigil, Charles having prior convinced the doctors that Hank looked human. For a long time, Charles didn’t know where he was or what had happened. He didn’t know the day of the week, or even sometimes his own name, as the seizures continued to wreak havoc on his brain. After a few months in the hospital Hank did, truly, appear human again. Having found a way to ward off the beast. At four months, an infection treated and taken care of, the seizures under control, and the diagnosis settled as complete, the doctors let Hank take Charles home.

But it didn’t get any easier, there were some tasks to relearn, things lost in the paralysis of course, but during one seizure Charles’ left arm had taken some damage so rebuilding those muscles became curial. Also, there was a mild aphasia which had to be promptly taken care of before it became permanent. Hank would learn later that a telepath’s brain was exceptional at healing itself. So, it wasn’t long before Hank was showing Charles how to take care of himself again.

They didn’t fall in love until one night when Charles asked Hank to help him shower. Charles was sitting on his shower bench which had been recently installed, unsure of what to do with his body, as Hank warily undressed outside the shower curtain.

“Hank?”

“Yes Charles,” standing naked now, “what is it?”

“We don’t have to pretend that we both aren’t queer, do we?”

Hank heard the water coming on, saw the steam unfurling in the dim bathroom lighting, and slowly pulled the curtain aside, “I supposed there isn’t a point in lying to ourselves.”

But instead of perhaps being aggressive like Erik might have done, Hank lifted Charles gently, and slid beneath him, settling together on the shower bench. Hank gently kissed Charles on the ear, the neck, holding him firmly upright with one arm, and turning the temperature of the water up with the other.

“I can’t believe none of this bothers you,” Charles whispered quietly, letting the hot water ease the tension in his lower back.

Hank smiled modestly, readjusting both their bodies to be more comfortable, and settling into the heat, “I’ve had my doctorate since I was 20, I have three degrees, and I’m working on number four. There is a lot I understand, even if I am somewhat awkward.”

“You’ve never been awkward around me,” Charles says, closing his eyes.

“You’re different,” Hank says matter-of-factly. He pops the top of a shampoo bottle open, rubbing shampoo through Charles’ hair.

“I’m different, am I?” Charles chuckles.

Hank helps Charles to ease forward, soap running from the mop on his head. After a minute, Charles leans back again, eyes closed, as Hank slowly leans into him, kissing his wet neck. Hank can feel the bumpy scars on Charles lower back press against his belly.

Charles inhales tersely, leaning further into that mouth, “Don’t stop.” He feels Hank smile against his skin. Hank’s hands gild wetly over Charles' chest, a thumb against his nipple, Hank still holds him steady though. Charles’ hands eventually grasp Hank’s cock, growing harder between where Charles’ legs hang over Hank’s. Charles’ own cock still flaccid, Hank seems to care little. Suddenly a new heat, unrecognizable to Charles, grows in his chest. Hank breathes into his ear, sucking on his ear lobe, and Charles all but melts.

He manages to gasp a, “what…”

“Just…let it, it let it come.”

But Charles doesn’t hear him, his body is bursting it noisy arousal, that was different than any he’d had before. The hot water making their bodies slick. Charles his stroking Hank’s cock the best way he knows how, and Hank is making a noise behind him, his mouth somehow everywhere it needs to be. An ardor rising, rising, and he’s hot, he’s so hot, and a fuse goes off inside his head, and everything feels euphoric and he’s tingling all over and Hank is cumming and together their dopamine is loud and then Charles falls to rest on Hank’s chest and Hank is exhaling roughly onto Charles' neck. For one perfect second, everything is okay.

The hot water starts to die and the word 'bed' is all Hank can manage.

Charles says yes and Hank gathers Charles up, carrying him easily from the bathroom across the bedroom and to the bed, the cold water still running the distance. Hank and Charles lay together, breathing contentedly, as Charles begins to drift toward sleep.

“I think I love you,” says Charles quietly.

Hanks hums a small sound, smiling again gently, and turning to look at Charles, “I’ve loved for some time now, Charles.”

A warm silence falls, aching, quiet. Hank pulls the heavy blanket over both their bodies and comes to rest next to Charles, slowly resting his legs next to Charles’, Hank wraps his feet around Charles’ ankle, placing his head on Charles’ chest.

Charles is making sleepy little noises, “Love you.”

Hank laughs, “I love you too.”

The sunlight coming through the window grew dull and vanished altogether, sleep came fast for both of them, and for a second Hank pretended that Erik had never existed at all.


	11. Vanishings and Kidnappings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How does anyone sneak up on a telepath or capture someone who can bend metal and make it look easy, and better yet, how does someone capture both of them, at the same time?

Jean was gone.

She had vanished earlier that night and when Hank had left Charles’ side to check on the children, he saw Scott, stumbling blindly toward him the dark. His cane was nowhere to be seen, he was crying, arms outstretched. Hank scooped him up, cradling him gently.

“I want Mr. Charles!”

Hank soothed him, “Calm down Scott, tell me what’s wrong?”

It wasn’t long before Erik and Hank were casting their flashlights across the forest’s edge. Hank calling for Jean loudly, Erik standing still, a flashlight in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Charles, for what he was worth, allowed his telepathy to unravel its long, invisible tendrils. Even as his mind poured from his skull like a river, spreading, spreading, quite as far as he could reach; nothing. Charles held Scott, whose face was buried in his neck, and Ororo, who was curled against his stomach, closer to him. Sean, standing quietly next to Charles, put out a roach with the toe of his shoe.

“I don’t like this Charles, something feels wrong.”

Charles nodded, “Me either Sean.”

Further. Further. Further. Where was she? It appeared as if she had completed vanished. Suddenly a firm hand on his shoulder.

Charles looked to see Hank, “Don’t hurt yourself, I don’t know if you can take another bad seizure.”

Scott let out a small sob into the crook of Charles’ neck.

In the distance Erik moved carefully to the forest’s edge, evilness leaving him apprehensive, “Hank!”

Hank turned, the beam of his flashlight swinging, “Erik? What is it,” Hank shown his flashlight to see Erik gently peeling away the bark of a tree.

“All these trees…they’re all burnt,” The bark crumbled easily between his thumb and forefinger.

In the cold air, all their breath shone in the light of the flashlights, pale mist curling through the darkness slowly. The fog only growing thicker as Ororo became more upset.

Charles let his hands drop to the wheels of his chair, gripping them firmly enough to force a backward motion through wet grass. Even if he didn’t remember how to use it, he certainly had. He could feel new muscles flexing under his sweater.

“Quickly now, Ororo,” he helped her climb from his lap back into the van, “You too Scott. Quick,” Charles pulled the van door shut with one arm.

Now in the relative darkness, with just two flashlights and a cigarette for light Charles moved closer to the woods, sometimes stalling on wet grass and dirt, “I went wide with my search, she’s gone,” Charles said.

“That’s impossible,” said Hank, flashlight still focused on the bark of a maple tree. Sap stuck to his fingers as he pulled apart the burnt husks of what was left of the tree bark, “how could she have smoldered all these trees without burning the forest down, where did she even go?”

Charles said matter-of-factly, “Wherever she is, she’s not here.”

Hank turned around to look at Charles, who was newly unaware of his lower body, and nudged Charles’ foot from its crookedness with his own sneaker, “Why would she do that?”

“I haven’t the slightest.”

Erik finished his cigarette, the last bit of smoke escaping between his lips, “I don’t think everything is as it seems here, Charles.”

As Charles cast himself further out, against Hank’s better judgment, he found not only was Jean gone, but there wasn’t a mind to be had in miles. Erik was right, something was wrong.

 

\---

It was with the swiftness of a man fresh from surgery that Charles woke the next morning. A strange feeling of having slept too long and not at all left him confused. A sense of melancholy, steeped bitterly like too long tea, on this tongue. He was flat on his back, which is not how he’d slept before his accident, but everything was new again. He was flat on his back and he was cold. Freezing even.

Next, to him, Hank stirred, under their shared mound of blankets, “Charles…” came his voice, his head half hidden, the sun in his eyes. Charles smiled, as Hank pressed a small kiss to the top of his head, pulling him closer with one strong arm, “what time is it?” Came a second whisper.

 “Well the kids are still asleep, so it can’t be too late.”

Hank yawned, “We should get you off the ground.” Above their heads, the heat from their previously sleeping bodies hung low beneath the roof of the small tent.

Charles woke up flat on his back, only this time Hank’s face was pressed into the crook of his arm. The sun seemed a tad higher in the sky and Charles couldn’t help but feel that something was off.

Hank’s voice came, thick with sleep, “Charles…what time is it?”

Judging by the way the sun hit his eyes he figured it was midmorning, “Late I think, how have the kids not woken up?”

Hank chuffed, “Let’s get you off the ground.”

Charles woke up flat on his back but this time it was with the sense that this moment of brevity had happened before. He felt car sick but wasn’t moving.

Hank was sat up looking down at him, “Charles? What time is it?”

Charles woke up flat on his back, one stupid foot sticking out from the mound of blankets covering him and Hank, but this time Hank was gone. Sour bile uneasy in his mouth, he tried to call Hank’s name but his mouth was full of sand.

“Charles!?” But this time it was Erik, noisy frustration lent an unkemptness to his voice, “Charles goddamnit!” The bondage on Erik’s wrists was almost too tight, the ropes around his feet were slightly tighter, and joined in the middle by a rope traveling between the two. He took careful, easy breaths. Although he couldn’t see who was tied to the chair directly behind him, he knew it was Charles. Out of the very corner of his right eye, he could see what looked like the toe of a shoe. And if they’d gone to the trouble of bind his hands and feet, but not the feet of the person behind him, that could only mean one thing.

After what seemed like a while, he heard Charles wake up with a start and in a delusional kind of way whisper Hank’s name. It annoyed him. The foot, which hovered at the outskirts of his vision, didn’t move. He felt the rope go tight against his chest, which told Erik that Charles was struggling.

 “Stop, Charles,” Erik said loudly if only to alleviate some of the rope’s tightness. “We…we’re tied together, stop struggling or you’re going to hurt yourself, or me.”

There was a long silence, in which Erik wondered if perhaps Charles had passed out again, but after some time there was a quiet laugh, “Charles?”

Charles sighed after a while, “They didn’t bind my feet.”

“I don’t suppose they needed to.”

The light above them flickered.

“How long have been in here?”

“I don’t really know,” Erik tested the rope across their chest slowly, seeing if he could twist at all, “I’ve not been awake for long.”

“What the fuck happened, I just remember being in the dark with you two and the…oh god the kids? Where are the kids?”

The rope pulled tight again.

“Charles you have to calm down.”

“And why can’t I feel anyone in here?”

Some silence and Charles could feel Erik testing his range of motion tied the way they were, “I don’t know but I don’t feel a shred of metal, apart from the…”

Charles was briefly hopeful, “Apart from what Erik?”

“Apart from the…the screws in your back.”

Charles moaned, “Fucking hell.” They were never getting out of here. It was only he and fucking Erik, tied back to back in an empty room with no mutations to speak of, “No metal, no people, no sense of time, fuck.” Charles cast his eyes around the room, empty, dusty, made of cement. No windows, Erik must have been facing the door. One entry, one exit. Which didn’t matter much to him. Charles looked down at his awkward, unbound feet. One leg stretched off to his left, the other bent at the knee, both absolutely useless to him, “I think we’ve been down here a while, Erik.”

“And why’s that?”

Charles glanced down at his piss covered pants, “Ahhh, no reason, I just, I’m awfully stiff, my back I mean.” If his bladder had emptied that meant it had to have been something like six hours, maybe twelve if he’d been dehydrated the night before.

“Right,” Erik said, “we need to start coming up with some kind of plan.”

“Ah yes, a plan. And what do you propose we do? If you haven’t noticed, they tied you to dead weight. Without the use of my arms, which are presently bound tight, I’m pretty useless to you.”

Erik already knew that. He’d already taken that into account. Unless a person came through that door with an unprotected mind, or some metal to be had, Charles and Erik we pretty much fucked, “Someone has to come check on us soon, we’re prisoners. And if we weren’t of some use to them, I have a feeling we’d already be dead.” There had to be some metal somewhere, even a sliver would do. And every second Erik sat without a different metal to distract him, those screws in Charles back serves as a horrible reminder of what even a small piece of metal could do. Change lives irrevocably, ruin friendships, cause horrible, horrible pain.

“Goddd, Erik, please stop. Your mind is the only one I can hear, and your guilt is fucking smothering me,” Charles couldn’t believe any of this was even happening, “Unless you’ve someone figured out a cure for spinal cord injuries, in which case please share with the class, if not I suggest you shut up. At least Hank offers me solutions, I don’t need to be reminded constantly, it’s not as if I can forget about it.”

How does anyone sneak up on a telepath or capture someone who can bend metal and make it look easy, and better yet, how does someone capture both of them, at the same time?


	12. Let it Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They unexpectedly make an escape plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, it's been so long since I'd added a chapter, I've been very busy with a job and an internship. I'll try to post again somewhat sooner than it took me with this chapter. I'm also sorry that his chapter is shorter than the others, I just haven't had much time.

Erik remembered something secret, he remembered his secret, Schmidt’s concussive brainchild. Erik remembered that, with enough anger or drive, he had, on occasion, be able to pull the iron from the blood of a human. It wasn’t something he was proud to be able to do. It wasn’t something he’d ever told anyone else. But if a person came through that door right now, even with a helmet and no metal, Erik might, possibly, be able to kill them without moving a hand.

 

The ropes on Charles’ arms tightened and untightened as Erik flexed his biceps. Erik struggled to stay alert. Charles struggled more so, and he knew that just sitting in one spot long enough, especially soaked in his piss like this, could prove enough to kill him. If he developed a pressure sore and it became infected, the infection could kill him in a day. He didn’t know how he knew this, just that he did. And as time went on in isolation he began to remember more. Flashes of memories like fireworks were going off inside his head. After a few more hours the muscles in his back became so week that he could only lean limply forward, the ropes his only support. He did this angrily, having connected all the dots. Part of these recollections were because Charles, isolated from all other minds, could only connect to Erik’d. As if his mind were a lifesaver in a sea of silence. Isolation was a dangerous thing as a telepath.

The room filled slowly with the scent of lavender as Charles mind grasped wildly for some other kind of simulation.

 

After a while, the smell of urine also wafted upward.

 

How many hours and hours had it been? A greater silence growing between the two, and after what felt like an additional six or seven hours to Charles, the single light above them went out. Charles vocalized wordlessly as they were plunged into darkness. His telepathy had long since begun making up voices for him to hear.

 

Erik spoke for the first time in a long time, “They’re trying to break us.”

“It’s working,” Charles whispered, “It’s working Erik.” His head hurt, his back hurt, he’d pissed himself, and now he was hearing voices.

 

“Ignore them, Charles, you have to,” had Charles been projecting? “This is what people do to get other people to do things they wouldn't otherwise. Ignore those voices...you're projecting.”Ah.

 

“I’m…I’m just so tired of this.”

 

“Then let it out. All that pain and anger, let it out. Sometimes, when someone does something horrible to you, you begin to hate yourself for being angry, but you have to let that anger out.”

 

Charles closed his eyes. Trying to push the voices back. After more, innocuous time, there were only two voices left. Erik's voice and his. He traveled back, further into his mind; inside he was screaming. He saw himself, screaming still, grasping at his head, pulling at his hair. Such unbelievable, awful pain as his brain was dissected. Dissected by the angry projection of a small coin as it passed through the brain of another, but Charles is still half of who he remembered himself to be. The two voices again, he traveled forward, to a beach. He recognized the sand but not the heat. All around him hundreds of missiles. And there is a gun, but this time he has it. And he’s looking down at it, confused, and then he’s on his back, screaming as he’s drained of feeling. He’s burning up inside his flight suit. And then Erik’s there and then he’s not, blinking in and out of time, the deep blue sky behind him. A woman, not his sister, is there and gone, she's crying. Hank’s there too, holding him still, begging him to stop projecting. Begging him not to move. In his memory Charles realized that Hank must have known what had happened, what it meant. Erik is gone. And his sister is gone. And the plane his destroyed. And his legs don’t work anymore. And everything hurts and everything is aching. The sky. The sand. The sun. His heart as he’s picking up the broken pieces of his vertebra in the dark, trying to put them back together so that he can pour the white liquid of his spinal cord back inside. Nothing he can do is working. And then he wakes up. Everything hurts worse and he knows they’ve just cut him open, trying to do the same thing. But Hank tells him that probably nothing is going to work.  

 

Hank is holding him. Charles finds bits of sand in his hair for months. In his dreams, Raven has the gun and Erik has the gun and the gun never runs out of bullets. And he’s letting it out, and he’s crying and screaming and shaking. He’s letting it out. Letting it out. He sees his whole life, feels the ground being pulled out under him, as smoothly as a table cloth of silk. He sees his wheelchair. He sees himself using his wheelchair. He makes peace. Erik his there, and he reminds him, voice think with whiskey, that Charles is a god amongst men. He moves past that memory, Erik's mouth lingering as he leaves. He relishes in the care and love that Hank gives him. But always there at the back of his mind, a power, a danger. He’s a god amongst men. And he’s killing those men and the raising them from the dead. Then Jean, calling his name, in front of him in the darkness. Darkness. Darkness. His head hurts. Darkness.

 

Without warning, there is real blood in his mouth and the lights are still out and his face his half pressed into the floor and Erik his saying his name. His nose is bleeding and they’re on the floor, still tied together. Erik is saying something but Charles his grasping for something else. He’s remembering something. His brain is still on fire from what had to have been a seizure.

 

His nose was bleeding, actively, “Erik.”

 

“Charles thank god. What happened?”

 

“Erik, my nose is bleeding. It’s bleeding right now.”

 

“What does that mean, is that bad?”

 

“It doesn’t matter what it means. My nose is bleeding, use it.”

 

“Use-what…what do you…”

 

It was then that everything settled into place.

 

“Erik use my blood…the iron…you can use that.”

 

Erik felt a small burst of hope in his chest, “I don’t know if I…I can only do when I’m…really angry.”

 

“No no…remember what I taught you?” Charles can feel the grit of the floor pressing into his face, “Remember, rage…and, and serenity. You have to do this. It’s the only way. Calm your mind.”

 

Erik quietly separated the rods and screws in Charles’ back from the tingling iron in his blood. Reaching out for it in the dark. Such a tiny, tiny amount of iron stagnated in the pool from Charles bloody nose, and Erik needed to bring it out. He slowed his breathing. Jean had been right, he realized quietly, this is what Charles needed him for. Erik sought a place he hadn’t been able to find since leaving the beach. _Rage and Serenity._ Erik concentrated, feeling all the iron inside Charles, the iron-pumping through his heart. The iron circulating through his body. Outward he guided his mind, and almost as if he was meditating, he felt for the blood _outside_ Charles’ body. Erik left his monster, Schmitt, standing above him, laughing quietly. He forced Schmitt away. And slowly, more slowly than Erik even realized, the iron was pulled stickily from Charles blood on the floor. He heard Jean; _this is where you need to be. We need you. We need you. We need you._

 


	13. Reunion

His hands now free Erik tore at the lashings that bound the both of them. He noticed that Charles’ breathing had slowed. He placed an ear near Charles’ mouth and heard a slow but only meager example of life 

 

In the darkness, the whole world could be made of metal, but feeling the concrete under his hands, Erik knew he wasn’t that lucky. 

In the darkness they could both rise to their feet, ready to fight. But as Erik slid his hands through the pitch air to find Charles, he only found a gathering of labored breathing and unworking legs. Charles was sick. 

 

“Charles?” Erik’s hands rove to undo the rest of Charles’ bindings, “Are you awake?” Erik shook his shoulder gently, hands coming back bloody. He swore under his breath. If Charles died Hank would kill Erik himself. 

Scrambling for purchase of his own, Erik staggered to his feet. 

Disorientated by the lack of depth, or the presence of it? Finding Charles’ body again Erik lifted him in his arms. The small ball of iron, of blood, rested quietly in his pocket. 

 

From memory, he found the door and rested an ear against it. It seemed surprisingly thin. On the other side were a couple of voices; a man and a woman. As they grew closer Erik readied himself. They were just muffled voices, but voices growing closer nonetheless. Erik readjusted Charles in his arms. When the door opened the light would momentarily blind him. Erik stepped back. He’d need enough time for his eyes to adjust before whoever was coming could get to him. 

 

Erik took a deep breath, the ever-slight scent of lavender present. It was comforting. Erik knew that Charles was at least somewhat present. At the very back of his mind, nearly the top of his neck, Charles settled himself like a warm hand,  _ rage, and serenity.  _ Charles’ warm blood was leaking still, dripping from his face down Erik’s arm. 

The door opened. 

 

The light from the hall blinded him. When he was able to see, just barely, a voice entered the room, the body still a feminine silhouette, “I’m surprised.”

 

Erik’s mind scrambled to place the voice. He knew that voice.  _ He _ _ knew that damn voice.  _

 

His eyes adjusted. 

 

“Truly I am. Too bad about the Professor though. His blood...or yours?”

As his eyes finished adjusting the voice settled into place. Erik’s own voice caught in his throat, “McTaggart?”

 

“Should’ve never trusted a human, Erik.” He saw her eyes linger briefly on Charles’ form, drifting over his changed body, his unconscious sick frame. Erik gripped him only firmer. 

 

“Really is a shame,” She said again quietly. She remembered very little from the beach. For a long time, she wandered her blank memory an amnesiac and only found out later than a telepath had stolen that time from her, time she’d never get back. Memories not hidden but destroyed. Like a fire swallowing up a forest. Occasionally she had remnants of memory, sunlight, heat, a gunshot, a kiss…She lost a huge part of her life, as well as a hard-worked career. She had been proud of her job at the CIA, a women leading a team in a male-dominated industry but it had been all taken away from her in an instant, years of tough work proving her worth as women, all gone. So when Stryker offered her a position of power, she hadn't thought twice. Especially because it might lead to the closure of a huge and awful part of her life. She'd be able to officially say goodbye to the memories he had taken away from her. She'd be able to get a career back. She'd be able to stop her life from running down the drain. She could have her sanity back, no longer left to question what was and wasn't real, what was and wasn't her memory to keep. And finally, she'd be able to rest, with all these horrible things left behind. Stryker was right, mutants were dangerous and needed to be contained, she knew that better than anyone. 

 

Shortly after her termination, Stryker has stepped in a radicalized her. 

Much later she relearned everything. She looked at Erik again, nothing but a man consumed with rage, Stryker had told her. She looked at Charles. One of the most powerful mutants on the planet, she’d learned, with the power to read your mind and control your body; the ability to erase your memories completely. But he was a shattered man now, not only a mutant but a cripple she recalled from her briefing. The gunshot still haunted her, nearly as much as the fleeting image of a kiss. 

She looked at Erik again, she’d hesitated too long, overwhelmed. Her gun gripped firmly in her hand. Pointed at Erik’s chest. 

 

The metal in Erik’s pocket raged. This time Erik would kill her. 

So that’s what he did. He’d be damned if he let her try again. And in the end, with the light from the hallway pressing in at the darkness of their cell, McTaggart’s body still writhing slightly, gun still in her hand never fired, Erik stepped gingerly over her-blood still leaking from the back of her head where he’d passed the ball of iron through her skull. 

But McTaggart had gone dark, radicalized by a mistake, a lapse in Charles’ judgment; a conversation for later. 

 

He readjusted Charles’ frame and stepped into the well-lit hall. Many conversations were needing to be had, and they would if Charles’ didn’t bleed out before Erik could get them to help. Unlike other wounds, he couldn’t stem this one with pressure. 

 

Urgency grew, beating in both of them like an overworked heart. 


	14. Against the Dying of the Light

Erik couldn’t think through all the noise, and the brightly illuminated hall was now flashing with red security lights. He was running, dodging his way around corners, and sprinting down halls. He didn’t know where they were, only that he was making his way to the ground level of the building. The darkly lit staircase hollows their only respite from the loud and demoralizing light of the hallways. He hadn’t known how deep they’d been but only that he’d climbed ten stairwells from the bottom, with the added weight of Charles in his arms, and still hadn’t seen a window. He was growing tired; he was starting to panic. Images of the camps pushing in and out of his mind and Schmitt’s voice emanating from the bottom of the well of stairs, a cacophony of laughter in the gloom, haunting Erik even in his death. 

 

He stopped to rest and could hear voices in the hall, just beyond the door. His sweaty shirt clinging to his back as he rested against the cool concrete. Breathing heavy. If guards opened the door into the stairwell, they’d be dead. For the first time in decades, he felt real fear. The voices with their boots growing closer still, causing a racket in the hall, and all this for the two of them. He held his breath, stepping further into the darkness. As his heart yammered away behind his ribs, thinking surely, they would die, the door flew open, bathing them in light. No time now. Erik was about to act when he realized that even as the man looked right at them, flooded in bloody light, he didn’t appear to  _ see  _ them at all. Erik froze, not wanting to move, he watched as the man stepped back into the hall, gun pressed to his fatigues, his eyes turning white. With the door shut they were again cooled by the darkness and Erik managed a small, exhausted smile. He looked down to see a barely conscious Charles, pale from lack of blood but hot from infection. 

 

“Oh, thank God,” Erik managed. 

 

And Charles for the sake of him laughed the smallest laugh, “We both smell fucking awful,” he said.

 

Erik felt himself slipping from exhaustion, wanting to collapse but knowing he had to keep going, “Do you know where we are, anything at all?”

 

“No, but…” a pause which made Erik uneasy, “I think another three flights and we might find the ground floor.”

 

Erik only nodded, knowing every step he took now brought them closer to escape. Each step was more arduous than the last and he was reminded of crawling through the cold mud, watching people he loved screaming as they were dragged away to be burned alive, their screams kept forever at the back of his own throat. He was reminded of nearly freezing to death every night, and only kept alive because he forced himself to walk, even when he was so thin that he could barely stand. And each step there felt one second closer to making it out of the camps alive. He is reminded of then being forced to march through miles of snow and ice with paper-thin clothes and no shoes, and he wonders how he survived at all. 

 

But he owes it to Charles to make it out alive, both of them. He wouldn’t let Charles get hurt any more than he already had. 

 

_ Just keep walking. Rage and serenity, rage, rage, and serenity. Rage.  _

 

And when the three flights of stairs were over and he staggered half-dead into the hall, everything was frozen, except the red flashing lights which cast eerie shadows on bodies which struggled in terror to move. Reaching up for their heads, faces turned up in agony, their eyes all milky white. Just the light on their bodies as they moved through the sea of guards and doctors which, seconds before, had been racing to secure the facility and find the two of them. So many people in a paralyzed stupor, knowing how to move but being unable to. 

 

At the front doors, only snow and a dark forest met them. But Erik walked out anyway. If someone didn’t find them now, they’d freeze to death before ever finding help. And in the snow, Erik is no longer a man but a jew kid, freezing to death, his mothers’ blood on his hands. In just his thin boots his feet are quickly turned numb. And even as the darkness of the wilderness consumes them, Erik keeps walking, Charles covered in sweat, dying in his arms. And he is a kid again. Impossibly small against the horrible and dehumanizing largeness of the world. He relearns his lack of worth, out there, between the trees, in the snow. He sees Schmitt move among the trees ahead of him, every once in awhile, turning around to smile strangely at Erik. Deep in the forest ahead of him a light is growing, brilliant and more brilliant until it’s all Erik can see. A lighthouse in a see of trees. His eyes are full of light and then full of darkness. The last thing he feels is cold snow on his face, Charles' slightly beating heart somewhere in the dark, and Schmitt’s warm hand guiding him into the light; all he hears in his mother’s voice.  


	15. Warmth At Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A happy, cozy, fluffy, slightly domestic ending to this dark tale. Thanks for hanging on to the end!!

Charles closed his eyes, for what felt like possibly the last time, and must have traveled back in time. At first, he was very warm. His whole body burned with a mellow fire crackling in his rib cage. Each time he took a breath he gave oxygen to the fire until it filled him up and he disappeared like a homemade hot air balloon. Not long after, he woke up to his body floating in a warm pool of water, in the summer, with the sun in his eyes. It felt a lot like being born, only he thought to himself that maybe he had died that he was in heaven. His body afloat like he didn’t weigh anything. The sun in his eyes like that’s all there was in the whole world. And he was so happy to be dead. He moved his arms a little, pushing himself across the pool. 

 

Only then did he recognize it as his own pool. Only then did he hear a voice. Above him, the voice stepped into the light and it was Hank, with his hands on his hips, peering down at him with a small smile, almost like he was just about to laugh but had stopped himself.

 

Only then did Charles realize that this was a memory. But he was happy to be there, in this memory, suspended in time, lost in psychic space.

Hank jumped into the pool fully clothed, taking Charles down with him. 

Charles laughed and the whole laugh filled him with peace as Hank embraced him. Long arms wrapping easily around Charles’ small frame. Keeping Charles upright, pressing him gently again the cement edge of the pool. 

 

“You’ve gone and soiled your clothes.” Charles heard himself say. 

 

Hank only shrugged, pressing a quick kiss against Charles’ mouth, “I would’ve soaked my pants getting you out of here anyway.”

 

“Excuses,” Charles quipped, returning the kiss. The water lapped against their bodies, as the wake from the jump into the pools found its way across, “Why don’t you take your shirt off why you’re here?” Charles felt his fingers pry at wet fabric. 

 

“Since you asked so nicely,” Hank struggled out of his shirt, leaving it to float. 

 

Now Hank’s body felt closer, felt more real. Smooth and wet and warm. The sun and the water their only witnesses. This was heaven and he never wanted to leave. Free as he’d ever been able, weightless in the water it felt like his injury didn’t really matter, the only thing he wished he could do at the moment was to wrap his legs around Hank’s waist. But he had arms for that and pulled Hank closer. Until Hank’s mouth was pressed into the nap of Charles’ neck. 

 

“I’m so glad we didn’t lose you,” came the quiet noise of Hank’s hot breath and then a gentle kiss that grew in urgency until the urgency filled Charles' stomach. 

 

He heard himself ask, “What did you say?”

 

Hank pulled away, “I said I was glad we didn’t lose you…”

 

“You don’t say that.”

 

Hank seemed to drift away, “Charles…what…what are you…” but the more he spoke the further away he got until it was just Charles in the pool. And the water was rising. The water was cold. And he was cold and the sun was gone. And even though it felt like forever when it woke up it would feel like a cold wet instance in a huge lifetime of happenings. 

 

When he woke up. 

 

When he woke up?

 

Was he going to wake up?

 

And then, he did. He woke up, sputtering for an easy breath. He wasn’t in the water he was in bed, old blankets covering his body. He could hear a fire somewhere in the background. He could hear the wind howling. He tried to move but his body felt heavy and dead. There was dried blood on his hands. Upon further inspection there was even a scratchy wool hat pressed his head. He felt clammy. 

What the fuck had happened?

 

He called out, quietly at first, his throat felt rough. A lot like it had felt when they pulled the tube out of his trachea after surgery. He pried at the blankets numbly and noticed his fingers were frostbitten. 

Then he heard men talking in the hall. He heard Erik with certainty. Another man whose voice he didn’t recognize. He searched with his mind, and despite a headache, was able to lift a name.  _ Logan.  _

 

_ Erik, can you kindly tell me what the hell… _

 

From the hall, Erik peered into the bedroom and let out a tremendous breath, “Thank God you’re awake.”

 

Charles heard himself ask before anything else, “Where’s Hank?” then felt quite badly and followed quickly by asking, “what happened?”

 

As Erik entered the small room the man who was Logan followed, a pile of thin logs balanced on his forearms. Erik’s feet and left hand and arm were bandaged. Erik took a chair, wincing slightly. He carefully crossed his arms. 

 

“And who’s Logan? And also, where the fuck are we?”

 

Erik smiled slightly, “You want them answered in the order?”

 

Charles only sputtered. 

 

“He’s Logan and we are in his house. You should be more polite; he saved our lives.”

 

Charles searched the room but Logan was gone, only a larger fire left behind him. Charles heard the water running in the distance and the sound of a gas stove being lit.

 

“Hank’s on his way, with the kids.  _ And Jean  _ if you can believe it, also saved our lives.”

 

Charles looked at his hands, happy to still have his fingers. 

 

“We were kidnaped Charles, and when they saw Jean had left, they took you as the next best thing. And me, apparently.”

 

“How-”

 

“I broke us free. But Charles.” Erik adjusted his aching body, glad for the fire’s warmth “It was Moria who took us.” Charles looked equally as shocked, “I killed her. Before she could kill you.”

 

Charles brought his hands to his face, taking a deep breath before continuing, “She had the right.”

 

“You should’ve never taken that from her. But regardless she was going to kill you, probably both of us. Make peace with what you did or it will eat you up inside.” Erik stood, a little shakily, and left the room. 

 

Not long after the house began to smell of cinnamon. Which meant Jean was close, and so was Hank. And the rest of the kids. And Alex. Charles heard the engine of the van turning off and the car doors shutting. Before long Charles had a pile of kids on his lap and a relieved Hank pressing a kiss to his forehead. They were all screaming happily the way kids do, nearly unintelligible. 

 

“I’m so glad we didn’t lose you.” His dream/memory came full circle, he must have been somehow connected to Hank’s mind, then more quietly he whispered, “Jean burned that place to the ground.” 

 

Charles’ let himself make eye contact with Jean. Match lit eyes glowing just barely in the low light.  _ The future.  _ He remembered the one Jean had shown him. __ Jean must have seen it all ahead of time. He saw Jean running through snow as she melted it. Turing the trees to ash. She must have known she didn’t stand a chance unless she ran when she did. By the time she reached Logan, he had smelt the forest burning. But to see a small girl emerge from the treeline, barefoot but not frostbitten, was something new. Between Jean on his blanket-covered lap, playing gently among the two other kids, and Logan in the kitchen making some type of soup, Charles easily lifted the details. Jean had urged Logan to take his truck twenty-something miles west, in the heavily falling snow, to rescue the two men lost in the woods. But as she was a telepath, he hadn’t needed much convincing. She rode shotgun until they came across Erik, barefoot in the snow, a sickly Charles in his arms, covered in his own blood. As Erik fell to the ground they slammed on the breaks. And as Jean stepped into the headlights the building began to burn in the distance. She had seen the future, one where Erik and Charles froze to death, huddled in the snow, surrounded by a dark forest. And she prevented it. By making Erik stay, by disappearing, and by seeking out Logan. It all came full circle in the end. But instead of a future apocalypse that they had been sure Jean would cause, it was one of her, burning the government-run facility to the ground, and saving their lives. She had known at the hotel that day, that wherever they stopped for the night would be their last, so she pushed them further north until she found herself walking distance from Logan.

 

And now, Charles broke eye contact, they were safe. For now. In Logan’s small cabin. The winter raged on outside. But Jean had saved them, all of them. Erik called the kids to the kitchen for some food. Then it was just Hank and Charles. And Hank found himself clambering under Charles' blankets, wrapping his own legs around Charles’, nestling his face into the crook of Charles’ neck. 

 

Charles let himself feel safe. Comforted by Hank’s quiet breathing and warm body. In the background, the three kids caused a ruckus, and Charles laughed. After everything that had happened, it seemed that they’d come out on top. Logan’s gruff voice could be heard trying to control three young children. He was inexperienced. After a little longer, Charles saw Alex come inside, fumbling free of his shoes, and moving into the kitchen, equally as grateful for whatever had been thrown together. His cast had been signed and scribbled many times since Charles had last seen him. 

 

“How long were we gone?” Charles asked quietly, snuggling closer. 

 

“Too long,” Hank said sleepily, “I couldn’t take all three kids,” he yawned and Charles’ arm found its way around Hank’s shoulder pulling him as close as possible.

 

“That explains why you’re so tired, too much babysitting, not at all worried about…” but Hank pressed a kiss to Charles’ mouth before he could finish talking.

 

“Shhhh…” Hank said.

 

“Were they good at least?”

 

“Of course, dear, but I don’t think they liked having only one dad around.”

 

Charles felt himself smile, genuine joy sparking in his chest, “Is that what they said?”

 

“They said you were their favorite dad and they’d rather have two instead of one. They were terribly worried.” 

 

“Of course,” Charles quipped, “apparently I’m the favorite.”

 

In the background Erik manhandled the children toward the living room, getting them ready for bed.

 

Hank began to drift to sleep but Charles stopped him, “Do you remember that swimming pool?”

 

He heard Hank’s breath hitch, “course.”

 

“Right then,” Charles said, his eyes growing heavy as well, “I’m the favorite dad….”

 

The sound of the fire and the weight of the blankets lulled them to sleep. They’d deal with everything else tomorrow morning.


End file.
